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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding trom 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/manchristjesusliO0daws 


The Man Christ Fesus 





TRADITIONAL PORTRAIT OF CHRIST 
Unknown 16th Century 


Che Man Christ Jeans I 





A LIFE OF CHRIST 
/ By 
W. J. DAWSON 


PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. 
New York & London 


Copyright, 1901, 1925, by 
WILLIAM J. DAWSON 


Printed in the U. S. A. 


PREFACE 


I have been requested by my publishers to write a 
preface to this volume, which shall be in the nature 
of a personal statement concerning the origin of the 
book. I have small faith in the value of prefaces as 
a rule, for if a book is incapable of conveying its 
spirit and intention to the mind of the reader, it is 
not in the power of a preface to remedy this defect. 
In this case, however, there are certain circumstances 
connected with the inception of the book which are 
of a confessional nature, and may therefore be of 
interest. 

The book sprang out of my public ministry in Eng- 
land which falls into three periods: five years spent 
in active relation to the problems presented by London 
poverty; three years in Glasgow, under the stimulus 
of the keen intellectual life of that great city, and 
thirteen years in a London semi-suburban church. 
These spheres were widely different, but in each I 
was in immediate contact, in a special way, with the 
lives of young men. During the whole of these twenty- 
one years the majority of my audiences was composed 
of young men. 

The fact that so many young men attended my 
ministry indicates that they had a vital interest in 
religious ideas. They had many moral and intel- 
lectual problems which distressed them, but their 
chief problem was religion. Many of them had broken 
away from an incredible and barbaric theology. The 
new wine of youth had burst the ancient bottles of 
tradition. Others were attached to inherited theol- 
ogies by the frailest of threads. They had the will 
to believe, but they did not know what to believe. 


Vv 


vi PREFACE 


They realized the unique charm of Jesus, but they 
were painfully aware that much that passed for 
Christianity contradicted this charm. The moral and 
intellectual difficulties which beset them were all 
dominated by a larger problem, the person and claims 
of Jesus. Hence a very large part of my ministry to 
them concerned itself with the story and the character 
of Jesus. I felt, and they felt, that nothing could be 
settled in one’s fundamental ideas of life and conduct 
till the relation of Jesus to these ideas was justly 
apprehended. 

My public ministry brought me into close relation 
with this multitude of sincere seekers after truth, but 
I had also another means of approach, even more im- 
portant. In a monthly journal called The Young Man, I 
opened a sort of confessional, in which I answered 
all kinds of questions on problems of faith and con- 
duct, and in a short time I found myself the recipient 
of letters from almost every quarter of the globe. 
These letters were all confessional; it seemed that 
their writers were willing to open their hearts to me 
as they could not to their own immediate friends, and 
they did so with amazing frankness. And in a vast 
number of cases the questions asked turned upon the 
interpretation of Christ and His teachings. During 
the fifteen years when I was engaged in this work, 
there was no month which did not bring me many 
letters of this nature, the sincere and often passionate 
outpouring of young souls in search of a real religion. 

For here is the point to be observed: all the writers, 
ranging from university students to men engaged in 
the humblest kinds of manual employment, intuitively 
grasped the distinction between the religion of Jesus, 
and a religion about Jesus: the truths which Jesus 
Himself believed and practiced, and the vast mass of 


PREFACE Vii 


creedal statements which have grown up around Him. 
They complained that the orthodox churches offered 
them little but doctrines about Christ, but they did not 
offer them Christ. Yet it was clear that there was 
a real Jesus, who never thought in the terms of 
dogmatic Christianity; whose probable attitude to 
dogmatic Christianity would be the same as His atti- 
tude to the scholastic and infertile Pharisaism which 
He detested; whose spirit was entirely absent, or at 
the best but sporadically revealed, in the popular 
travesty which called itself Christianity. 

Now it was obvious that matters of this import- 
ance could not be dealt with adequately in the limita- 
tions imposed by a monthly journal. Nor could they 
be judicially discussed in the pulpit. Consecutive and 
continuous exposition of the life of Christ is impossible 
in public addresses. Other needs have to be con- 
sidered, practical problems which claim solution, pub- 
lic questions which are of immediate urgency; so that 
the best one can do in deliberate exposition is sketchy 
and fragmentary. Hence there grew up in my mind 
the idea of writing a life of Christ, for it is only in 
long hours of silence and meditation that one con hope 
to attain even a partial vision of the Divine life of 
Jesus. 

For a long time this purpose was delayed by the 
- conviction of my own incompetence. Who could tell 
the human story of Jesus of Nazareth with a romantic 
charm that should equal that of Renan? Who could 
surpass Strauss in fearless ratiocination? Who could 
rival Farrar in the art of glowing rhetorical narrative? 
Certainly I could do none of these things. But never- 
theless I felt a powerful urge to attempt this appar- 
ently impossible task, because I realized that the theme 
was inexhaustible. 


Vili PREFACE 


There was also another conclusion borne in upon me 
by my constant study of literature, viz, that human 
thought is never static. However well a thing may be 
done in one age, the verdicts of the wisest are not 
final. They are capable of revision, and are invariably 
revised by succeeding generations. Every age writes 
its own books, and writes them its own way. There 
is a certain color of thought, a certain atmosphere, 
which belong to a given period; writers of this period 
are the product of their age and their thoughts are 
limited by the intellectual conditions in which they live. 
In spite, therefore, of all that previous writers had 
done, might it not still be possible to write a life of 
Christ in the terms of the modern mind? It would not 
be new, it could not be new; but if it interpreted cor- 
rectly those phases of faith and doubt, those impulses, 
intuitions, and dim apprehensions, which actually filled 
men’s minds in relation to Christ, it would have the 
effect of newness, and it would at least have the au- 
thority of sincerity. 

In respect of method, I knew that by my training 
and habit of mind, I could not write a theological life 
of Christ. I had no taste for the metaphysical subt- 
leties of Paul; I was inclined in my study of Chris- 
tianity to say with Bentham, “Not Paul but Jesus.” 
Jesus only began to exist for Paul on the day when 
He rose from the dead. All that I knew of Jesus I 
knew from the Gospels. All that the vast majority of 
Christian believers knew of Jesus was derived from 
the same source. There a Portrait existed, so fresh 
in color, so intimately true, that, like the portrait of 
Dante at Ravenna, it had survived all the discolora- 
tions of time and the defacements of ignorance and 
malice. If I could restore but by a line or a tint that 
Portrait, it was surely worth while. And this meant 


PRERACE ix 


that my aim must be to disclose once more The Man 
Christ Jesus—which I need scarcely remind my 
readers is a phrase borrowed from Paul. The regnant 
Christ of Catholic adoration was throned too high to 
be accessible to ordinary minds. The Man Christ 
Jesus still moved upon the common roads of life, and 
was visible to the humblest. 

So, in the close of 1900 I commenced to write this 
book, and then strange things began to happen to me. 


II 


The first was an overwhelming sense of the reality 
of the Portrait presented in the Gospels. With a 
divinely artless art, which transcends all art and fills 
the mind with wonder, four men of diverse idiosyn- 
crasy, set themselves to paint the authentic Jesus, and 
the result is an incomparable picture. It is more than 
a picture, it is a creation. The Man Christ Jesus lives 
and moves and breathes, with more of the functions of 
an unvanquishable vitality than any other man in his- 
tory. And it is more than a work of art, for the 
greatest literary genius of which we have knowledge 
could not have invented the entrancing and compas- 
sionate figure of Jesus of Nazareth. For, while His 
likeness to men is everywhere apparent, His superior- 
ity to men is incontestable, which was what Charles 
Lamb felt when he said that if Shakespeare entered 
the room we should all rise; if Jesus, we should all 
kneel. 

Now, I do not mean to say that this emotion excited 
by an intense study of the Gospels was a novel emotion, 
but it was new in its quality and in the force of its 
impact upon the mind. Words and phrases used by 
Christ kindled with a new and singular illumination. 
Detached incidents were perceived in their relation 


x PREFACE 


to a profound and orderly development. Passages 
heard many times with a sense of their beauty, now 
disclosed more than beauty, an inherent depth of mean- 
ing, a startling quality of spiritual appeal. The Gos- 
pels had hitherto had for me a sort of kaleidoscopic 
beauty; they now had the beauty of the rainbow, in 
which the seven chorded colors blend into perfect 
harmony. In searching the Gospels for themes I had 
often been more conscious of their discrepancies than 
of their unity. I had discerned this or that pattern 
in the kaleidoscope; often the design was exquisite, 
but sometimes it was confused and enigmatic. I now 
became conscious of the fundamental harmony, and 
I believe the real cause of this change was that for 
the first time my mind was saturated with the Gospels. 
I did not study them—I absorbed them; or perhaps it 
would be more correct to say they absorbed me. 

An illustration of this process may be found in 
the attitude of the mind to the highest class of poetry. 
It is part of a liberal education to become acquainted 
with classic poetry, but this often means little more 
than a study ofits syntax, its component elements and 
its peculiarities of literary form. A student may leave 
college with a great accumulation of exact knowledge 
of these matters, and yet may be entirely ignorant of 
the spirit of poetry. He may never get beyond this 
stage, and if he does not he will remain all his life a 
sterile pedant. But if in some hour of deep emotion, 
when the vicissitudes of life have softened or broken 
the heart, he should turn again to poetry, he is likely 
to find in it something whose existence he never 
suspected when poetry was no more to him than a 
subject of a college course and of competitive examina- 
tion. He will find the breathing of a living soul in 
passages which hitherto had been to him only examples 


PREVACE xi 


of literary form. He will be aware of a deeper music 
in them than the music of harmonious syllables. The 
spirit of the poet himself will salute his spirit, and 
henceforth it will be of Keats and of Wordsworth that 
he speaks, not of their poetry, because they themselves 
have entered into the secret shrine of his soul, to go 
out no more forever. 
Something analogous to this happened to me when 

I began to write this book. The spirit of Christ Him- 
self seemed to rise out of the familiar pages. He took 
possession of my mind. And so keen was this sense 
of His presence, that I often felt that He stood beside 
me as I wrote. My mind was filled with sweet alarm, 
trepidation, wonder, awe. I was writing of one who 
lived, of one who knew very well what I was writing. 
And often upon my lips were the words of Browning, 
who must have felt as I felt when he exclaimed, 

“O thou pale form, so dimly seen, deep-eyed 

a do I not 


Pant when I read of thy consummate power, 
And burn to see thy calm pure truths out-flash 
The brightest gleams of earth’s philosophy? 
Do I not shake to hear aught question thee? 
If I am erring save me, madden me, 

Take from me powers and pleasures, let me die 
Ages, so I see thee!” 


Ii] 


Now this temper is manifestly the temper of the 
mystic, and while it may be freely conceded that such 
a temper is a serious disqualification if one attempts 
to write biography, which needs above all things a 
calm, critical, discriminating intelligence, it will also 
be granted that without some degree of this temper 
no one can hope to write about Jesus. For Jesus was 
the greatest mystic who ever lived, and He cannot be 








xii PREFACE 


apprehended by those who have no touch of mysticism 
in their natures. The complaint which He so often 
made against the Pharisees was that they pulverized 
His rarest poetry with the hard pestle of their schol- 
astic logic. Hence He had to insist that His words 
were life and spirit, and were not to be taken in their 
narrow literalism. The plain fact with which I had 
to grapple was that a biography of Jesus could not 
be written as other biographies are written. There 
are elements in the Gospel story which baffle and 
overwhelm the purely critical intelligence. The mind 
succumbs to the extraordinary charm of Jesus. The 
affections are profoundly moved. The heart usurps 
the jurisdiction of the intellect, and when we are in- 
terrogated by the logical mind, we can only fall back 
on the evasive aphorism of Pascal, that the heart has 
reasons of which the reason is entirely ignorant. 
But Pascal’s aphorism is clearly capable of perilous 
misuse. For when mystic emotion altogether displaces 
intelligent apprehension, we reach the condition of 
mind in which the more incredible a thing is, the more 
easy do we find belief in it. Let it be granted that 
the biography of Jesus cannot be written as ordinary 
biography is written because the mind is baffled, the 
heart is overwhelmed by the miracle of Jesus; 
nevertheless the critical faculty cannot be discarded 
or put to the shame of deliberate abeyance. Human 
records are after all human records, and must be 
studied as such. They display, and cannot help dis- 
playing, the inherent limitations of their writers, and 
the common conception of the times in which these 
writers lived. Men writing in an age long prior to 
Galileo and Copernicus cannot speak of the physical 
universe in the terms which they employed; such 
writers must employ the thought-forms of their own 


PREFACE Xili 


day and generation. Or, to put it more strongly, men 
inhabiting the world of Apuleius, in which the strang- 
est myths and craziest occultisms obtained general 
credence, cannot be expected to speak as though they 
lived in the age of Darwin. Hence both rationalism 
and mysticism are necessary to any true interpretation 
of the life of Christ to the modern mind. Christ 
Himself asks what we think about Him, as well as 
how we feel toward Him. And in Browning, whose 
adoring tribute to Christ I have quoted, these two 
faculties are always at work, not in contradiction but 
in harmony, so that Browning is at the-same time a 
passionate apostle and a critical disciple, a lover of 
Christ and a relentlessly honest student of the sources 
of Christianity. 

But there was a yet more difficult problem; could 
the human Jesus of the Gospels ever be recovered? 
Had not unrestrained mysticism spiritualized Him out 
of all true relation to humanity? Had not the Church 
become His mausoleum, like that splendid edifice at 
Assisi which is reared above the humble Chapel, once 
surrounded by green woods, in which Francis received 
his divine call and found the vision of his Lord? The 
real Francis is the poet-saint of the Portiuncula; he 
has small relation to that mass of carved and gilded 
marble which is dedicated to his memory. And the 
real Jesus is the Jesus of Galilee and Olivet, who was 
pleased to call Himself the Shepherd of human souls 
and coveted no better praise than that He was the 
friend of publicans and sinners. In short, what had 
really happened was that Christ had ascended into 
heaven, but Jesus of Nazareth was lost. 

And this is putting the case mildly, for, on further 
consideration, I saw that Jesus of Nazareth was not 
so much lost as deliberately dismissed and exiled. It 


Xiv PREFACE 


was the majestic Christ of Pauline theology who 
dominated human thoughts, and Jesus of Nazareth 
still wandered from shrine to shrine of splendid adora- 
tion, with no place where to lay His head. Any at- 
tempt to reinstate Him excited alarm and resentment, 
and hence such a truly devout book as Seeley’s Ecce 
Homo was received sixty years ago with extreme dis- 
favor. The mass of men, in spite of all their protesta- 
tions to the contrary, find it easier to worship the oc- 
cult than the natural. <A veiled deity is more awful 
than an actual presence. A Christ, seated upon awful 
clouds of judgment, is much more consonant with 
human ideas of deity than a Jesus breaking bread with 
simple folk under humble roofs, and concerned with 
them in the small happenings of common life. 

During one of my visits to Italy I found a parable 
of these tendencies in the contrast afforded by two 
pictures. The first was Michelangelo’s terrific pic- 
ture of the Last Judgment on the wall of the Sistine 
Chapel in Rome; in which Christ appears as an angry 
Jove hurling bolts of flame upon His enemies. The 
other was a lunette of Fra Angelico’s above a door in 
in the cloister of St. Mark’s, at Florence, in which Jesus 
is seen as the Pilgrim Christ, talking with His two 
thrilled but doubtful friends on the road to Emmaus. 
In the one portrait was inhuman majesty, in the other 
perfect human grace and sweetness. Gazing on Michel- 
angelo’s picture one heard that fierce music of the 
Dies Irae which has crashed and thundered through 
medieval Europe, producing abject terror; in Fra 
Angelico’s is heard the sweet counsels of Him who 
“spake with man’s voice by the marvelous sea.” I had 
no doubt which was the true vision, but I also knew 
that the serene art of the cloistered monk who painted 
His pictures, as he tells us, “on my knees, praying,” 


- 


PREFACE XV. 


could not contend with the almost brutal vigor of 
Michelangelo. Unfortunately for Europe and the whole 
Christian world, the Sistine Chapel and not the cloister 
of St. Mark’s has enthralled the minds of men. 

Here then was my problem, to restore Fra Angelico 
and to dethrone Michelangelo; to recapture the lost 
grace of the Gospel Jesus and to forget the inaccessible 
Christ of relentless metaphysics: to turn the thoughts 
of men from the occult to the natural. By this I did 
not mean the rejection of supernatural elements in the 
story of Jesus. The strongest impression made by 
Jesus on His contemporaries was of some ineffable, 
inexplicable, mysterious quality in Him, which set Him 
apart from ordinary’ men, even the greatest and the 
wisest. No one has ever written of Him without 
moments of pure astonishment, when the mind was 
overwhelmed by this quality in Him. It was apparent 
to a mind as mercilessly analytic as John Stuart Muill’s, 
and it overwhelmed with wonder an intelligence so 
brilliantly mundane as Napoleon’s. But this quality 
could be trusted to take care of itself. One thing 
quite clear in the Gospel narrations is that Jesus was 
well aware of it and unwilling to obtrude it. Hence 
His desire to keep His miracles secret, to treat them as 
purely subsidiary, to deter men from thinking of His 
supernatural qualities in such a way as to overlook His 
essential oneness with humanity. For it was this es- 
sential oneness which was the chief thing. It was more 
important to Him that men should think of Him as 
an Example than as a God. And the most important 
thing still is that men should think of Him as repre- 
sentative rather than unique, that while they may 
recognize the God in Him, they should yet be more 
aware of “the faint divine” in human nature, which 


Xv1 PREFACE 


may be developed into a life and character which re- 
semble His. 

With these thoughts in my mind I began to write 
my book in 1900, but I had not gone very far before I 
felt that I needed more than an exhaustive study of 
the Gospels to succeed. My very familiarity with the 
Gospels made freshness of apprehension difficult. The 
long habit of spiritualizing every incident had dulled 
the reality of the story. I felt that to apprehend the 
Gospels justly I must transport myself to the atmos- 
phere in which they were written, I must become 
familiar with the actual scenery of Christ’s ministry, 
and so I put my book aside and in the spring of 1901 
sailed for the Holy Land. 

IV 

I was told by certain friends that this was the un- 
wisest course I could pursue, for a visit to the Holy 
Land was much more likely to destroy faith in Christ 
than to strengthen it. I suppose that what they meant 
was that the geographical insignificance of Palestine, 
the ruin which had overwhelmed it, the quarrels over 
holy places and the ignorance and superstition evoked 
by these contentions, made the Holy Land an incred- 
ible cradle for a religion which had imposed itself upon 
the most civilized races of mankind. But, as I told 
them, this was merely to repeat the gibe of Christ’s 
contemporaries that no good thing could come out of 
Nazareth, and it was like saying that Burns could not 
be a great poet because he was born in a two-roomed 
cottage near the town of Ayr, and that Lincoln was a 
myth because there was nothing in his ancestry to 
predicate immortal genius. For my own part, I can 
only repeat what I have said elsewhere, that the Holy 
Land was my Fifth Gospel, which gave fresh credi- 
bility to the other four. In those brief weeks of travel 


Re aN Ee XVii 


in the Holy Land I came nearer to the Human Jesus 
than I had ever done before or am likely to do again. 
Ah, what enchanted days were those when I moved 
through scenes which at every point reminded me of 
Jesus! Living in the very places which were once dear 
to Him, sailing on His own lake, beholding not alone 
the outlines of shore and hill which He beheld, but also 
many characteristics of the general life which had 
suffered little change in the wide vicissitudes of twenty 
centuries, an indescribable sense of familiarity ob- 
sessed the mind. The parables which He invented, 
the metaphors which He employed, the daily incidents 
associated with His ministry, were no longer seen 
merely as delightful elements of literature, but as a 
series of pictures, touched with the hues of indelible 
reality. The lilies of the field still bloomed beside the 
lake, the city set upon a hill, which could not be hid, 
held its ancient station, as in the day when He drew 
from it an illustration for His sermon. The women 
ground their corn by the same primitive methods, the 
oxen wore the same yoke of meek obedience, the one- 
handled plough was the same as that which He saw 
when He said that no man who put his hand to the 
plough and looked back was fit for the kingdom of 
God. And the misery of the land was still apparent 
in the blind and maimed who begged by the wayside, 
and in the lepers, with their pitiable deformations, 
who were grouped around the gateway of Gethsemane. 
Passing one morning through a sleeping house to get 
access to the shore of Galilee I knew what Jesus meant 
when He spoke of taking up the bed and walking, for 
the bed was but a rug quickly rolled up: and standing 
on that beach, as the morning mist lifted, I saw the 
red-sailed fishing-boat on which John and Peter might 
have passed the night in fruitless toil; and the scene 


xviii PREFACE 


was complete even to a little fire of wood upon the 
shore, which sent up its delicate blue smoke into the 
morning air. No one who has not passed through 
Palestine with the Gospels in his hand can comprehend 
the thrill and shock of mind thus experienced. It was 
as though Jesus spoke afresh in a land where all things 
speak of Him. 

So far as the metaphors used by Jesus went, no 
doubt I could have found them explained in a dozen 
books of reference, but it is a totally different thing 
to see what Jesus saw when He employed them. Just 
as the actual domestic and civic life of the Roman 
Empire can be better understood by a day spent at 
Pompeii or in the Naples Museum than by weeks of 
laborious reading, so the Holy Land explains Jesus. 
It is one thing to accept the fact that the Romans 
were a highly civilized people, but quite another to see 
the actual homes in which they lived, their gardens, 
fountains, and mural decorations, their elaborate sys- 
tem of baths, the ornaments used by their women and 
the instruments employed by their surgeons. In the 
same way the actual life of Jesus reveals itself in the 
Holy Land. It becomes indubitably real. The Christ 
of ecclesiasticism is forgotten so completely that we 
wonder if He ever existed. It is the human Christ we 
see, passing through these scenes, registering all He 
saw on a mind of exquisite perceptions—the authentic 
Man Christ Jesus. 

Here then, I found the necessary dynamic for my 
book. I went back to London taking Palestine with 
me, and day by day as I wrote it was not London that 
I saw, but the green hills of Nazareth, shining clouds 
gathered over Hebron or mirrored in the blue of 
Galilee, Bethlehem on its lime-stone cliff and Jerusalem 
in its imperial pre-eminence and pathetic desolation. 


PREFACE xix 
V 


The book was written in a great fervor of spirit in 
the months which followed my return from the Holy 
Land. I can truly say that I have never toiled over 
any book which I have written with such intense en- 
ergy. It was the kind of toil which wore me out not 
only by its exactions on the mind, but still more by its 
demands upon the heart. I tried to reduce my labor by 
using parts of the book in my public ministry, but I 
soon found that this method was impracticable. My 
congregations were averse to continuous exposition. 
They preferred topical oratory, and were actually dim- 
inished by my attempts to present them with an honest 
portrait of their Redeemer. I note the fact without 
comment, and with no intention of irony. 

Week after week I toiled on at my task, and, while 
often weary and discouraged, the first flame of spiritual 
ecstasy never burned low or suffered any serious dim- 
inution. The last proofs were corrected in the garret 
of a solitary house, reputed to be haunted, around 
which spread great breadths of lonely moorland. The 
sun was sinking over those treeless hills and unpopu- 
lated valleys where the legions of Vespasian had 
marched in the days when the name of Jesus was un- 
known to the Roman, or uttered only in derision. A 
distant Church bell broke the evening stillness. It 
was a strange thought, that here so far from Beth- 
lehem and Calvary the hand of Jesus rang that bell. 
It was a stranger and a sadder thought that after so 
many centuries the true significance of the life of 
Jesus was as little understood by the mass of men as 
by the soldiers of Vespasian. 


The book had brought me great joy in the writing 
as well as inexorable toil. It had recreated in me an 


' 


xx PREFACE 


inextinguishable faith in Christ. My hope was that 
what it had done for me, it might do for others. I 
did not dare to think of it as I had thought of my previ- 
ous books: I had no dreams of literary popularity ; such 
dreams were sacrilegious: But if I had had such 
hopes they were destined to disappointment. From the 
first the book encountered unusual vicissitudes. It 
was published at a time when the public mind was 
deeply pre-occupied with other matters. Its pub- 
lisher, who had given it every advantage that fine 
printing and excellent book-making could afford, soon 
after its issue fell into financial difficulties, and his 
copyright was sold. The circulation of the book ceased 
at this time, though another edition was issued by the 
purchaser of the copyright. In the meantime, a small 
edition had been issued in America by George W. 
Jacobs and Co., of Philadelphia. For reasons which 
no doubt were considered valid my original title “The 
Man Christ Jesus” was dropped in the American edi- 
tion, and “The Life of Christ” substituted. I was 
still resident in London, and was unaware of this 
change of fitle, to which I should not have assented. 
I am glad that the original title is now restored, after 
twenty-four years, for it is more accurately descrip- 
tive of the intention of the book. 

In spite of all these casualties, however, the book 
has persisted, and has had in America a certain meas- 
ure of appreciation. But the number of its readers 
has always been limited, and to the general public it 
will now appear as virtually a new book. The condi- 
tions of public thought are certainly more favorable 
to its publication today than they were in 1901. At 
no period has there been more vital interest in the 
fundamental conceptions of Christianity. The question 
of the ages, What think ye of Christ? is the most 


PREFACE XXi 


widely discussed of all questions in our own age; and 
while we may deplore the divisions caused by modern 
controversies, we owe them a measure of gratitude for 
the spirit of enquiry concerning the person and teach- 
ings of Christ which they have aroused. 

My first intention was to re-write the book, but re- 
written books are seldom successful. The joins be- 
tween the old and the new cloth cannot be concealed; 
in the language of the Divine Master of metaphor, 
“the new piece taketh away from the old, and the rent 
is made worse.” The book was written with a certain 
integrity of design, it is impregnated with the strong 
emotions which produced it, and therefore it is prob- 
able that any essential modification of its character 
would be likely to rob it of any value which it has 
without adding any equivalent value. So, with a few 
minor corrections, I have decided to let my work stand 
in its original form. And I am sustained in this de- 
cision by a careful re-reading of the book, which has 
convinced me that twenty years have altered nothing 
that is fundamental in the general attitude of men 
toward Christ, or in the nature of the problems which 
His life presents. 

From the original preface to the 1901 edition, I may 
add one explanatory paragraph. I have refrained 
from footnotes, because, as I then said, I could not 
continually acknowledge the sources of my information 
“without encumbering every page to an incredible de- 
gree. The same remark applies to scripture refer- 
ences, which, in the nature of the case are yet more 
numerous. It seemed better therefore to omit all foot- 
notes. The readers, familiar with the work of other 
writers, will recognize the nature of the author’s obli- 
gations; the less experienced reader will perhaps be 
grateful for a narrative which offers no distractions 


XX11 \ PREFACE 


and inflicts none of that peculiar irritation which elab- 
orate footnotes rarely fail to produce on the minds of 
those who are more interested in a history than the 
technical processes by which its structure is built up.” 


W. J. DAWSON. 
Newark, N. J., 1925. 


COIN TENSES 


PAGE 
INTRODUCTION 

THE MEMORABILIA OF JESUS } : SG 
CHAPTER I 

THE BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS . ; beau 
CHAPTER II 

JOHN THE BAPTIST ; A ; ‘ Von 
CHAPTER III 

THE INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS : ; vn 640 
CHAPTER IV 

THE OPENING SCENES : : ; Bikey if 
CHAPTER V 

THE DIVINE PROGRAMME . A ; 4 AC 
CHAPTER VI 


IDYLLIC DAYS F 2 : ; " aioe 


XX1ii 


xxiv CONTENTS 
CHAPTER VII 


THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE . 


CHAPTER VIII 


JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 


CHAPTER IX 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 


CHAPTER X 


THE NEW SOCIETY 


CHAPTER XI 


ONE OF THE DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN . 


CHAPTER XII 


THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 


CHAPTER XIV 


A GREAT CRISIS . 


CHAPTER XV 


THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 


CHAPTER XVI 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE . 


. 105 


. 120 


mae fs 


. bees 


- 158 


- 170 


. 183 


pat Ee 


. 212 


THE 


THE 


THE 


THE 


THE 


THE 


THE 


THE 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER XVII 


EVENT AT CHSAREA PHILIPPI 


CHAPTER XVIII 


FAREWELL TO GALILEE 


CHAPTER XIX 


UNCHASTE 


CHAPTER XX 
FULLER EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 

CHAPTER XXI 
TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT . 

CHAPTER XXII 


RAISING OF LAZARUS 


CHAPTER XXIIT 


LAST RETREAT AND THE RETURN 


CHAPTER XXIV 


ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 


CHAPTER XXV 


GREAT RENUNCIATION 


CHAPTER XXVI 


TRAITOR © e ° ® 


XXV 


PAGE 


. 225 


. 240 


. 253 


. 269 


» 285 


. 301 


ath 


. dad 


2 d45 


e 361 


Xxvi CONTENTS 
CHAPTER XXVII 


THE LAST SUPPER AND THE ARREST OF CHRIST 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


THE TRIAL OF JESUS 


CHAPTER XXIX 


THE DEATH OF JESUS 


CHAPTER XXX 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 


APPENDIX . ° e 3 


PAGE 


af (V 


. 393 


. 412 


. 428 


449 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


FACING 
PAGE 


TRADITIONAL PORTRAIT OF CHRIST. Unknown 
TOCIAGC CHUULYN: Pilie Reyer eae tare ey ah Frontispiece 


THE REPOSE IN EGYPT. sir Joshua Reynolds 
(EIS. UTS? Vie cer eee Nee cai Lie ee Bye 


THE HoLy FAMILY. Anthony Van Dyck (1599- 
DL re ee ner ied erasure Sits aetedebtod fae sath ee 84 


THE WOMAN TAKEN IN. ADULTERY. Lorenzo 


LOPLORIULAS = EDO GO iia tee e hiahe area aeatat eee naenee tee 253 
CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS. Attributed to 

GLOT LONG OLA h- LO LO) Tae ies ak e S v atari ote 269 
CHRIST ON THE WAY TO CALVARY. Annibale 

CTT OCCU LODO Us. LOU Jar cube gina t mr ce aia uMie 394 
EccE Homo. Luis De Morales (1509-1586).... 414 
THE DEAD CHRIST. Velasques (1599-1660).... 481 


XXVIiI 











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THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


CHAPTER I 
THE BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 


So much obscurity covers the early years of Jesus that it 
is difficult to fix with more than approximate accuracy even 
the date of His birth. It was not until the sixth century 
that the Christian era was definitely fixed, upon what grounds 
it is now impossible for us to ascertain. It has even become 
a matter of controversy whether Jesus was born in Bethle- 
hem, and the elaborate statement of St. Luke, which con- 
nects His birth with an imperial census, is held by many to 
have been founded on a misconception. According to Roman 
history the census of Augustus took place ten years later 
than the date fixed by St. Luke. Whether there was an 
earlier census we do not know. Quirenius was certainly 
Legate of Syria at the period of the traditional date of 
Christ’s birth, and it is equally certain that it was during 
his tenure of office that a census was compiled. These dif- 
ficulties of chronology will perhaps never be fully resolved, 
nor is their solution of great importance. The most that we 
can say is that it seems unlikely that St. Luke should have 
perpetrated a gratuitous blunder, for which there is no ap- 
parent reason or excuse ; and it is at least certain that Jesus 
was born about four years earlier than the recorded date. 


Stronger reasons than any that have yet been alleged 
21 


22 DHE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


would be necessary to discredit the distinct statement of 
both St. Matthew and St. Luke that Jesus was born in Beth- 
lehem. If we regard the extremely circumstantial account 
of the Nativity furnished by St. Luke as in all probability 
directly derived from Mary of Nazareth, the inference is 
irresistible that the last point on which a mother would be 
likely to err is the birthplace of her Child. It is a matter 
of legitimate surprise that two of the Evangelists make no 
mention of Bethlehem, but it is pushing inference beyond all 
that is rational and legitimate to declare that because St. 
Mark and St. John give no account of the birth in Bethlehem 
therefore they were ignorant of it. They may have been 
perfectly familiar with the tradition, and yet have regarded 
it as unessential to the narrative. St. John, writing from 
the point of view of the mystic and interpreter of ideas, 
would certainly have so regarded it. Nor is it fair to assume 
that the introduction of the Bethlehem story was considered 
necessary in order to give authentication to the claim that — 
Jesus was of the House of David. Such a proof would have 
seemed to the Jew no proof at all; it was a device at once 
puerile and foolish. For the Jew, of all men, was both an 
expert and a pedant in all matters of genealogy. To this 
day the Jew who may be called upon to bless the congrega- 
tion in the synagogue inherits that right by oral tradition. 
It is not necessary for him to afford any written proof of 
descent: he knows that his fathers and forefathers blessed 
the people before him; and this sure and tenacious memory, 
transmitted through many generations, is accepted as final. 
Moreover, St. Matthew precedes his account of the birth of 
Christ with an elaborate genealogical tree, concluding thus : 
“So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen 
generations; and from David unto the carrying away into 
Babylon are fourteen generations; and from the carrying 


Di bolie AN are lol ineO is PHS US 238 


away into Babylon until Christ are fourteen generations.” 
St. Luke, with a yet bolder pen, concludes the genealogy of 
Jesus with an immortal phrase: “Which was the son of 
Adam, which was the Son of God.” After statements so 
daring and precise as these, it is nonsense to suppose that 
the journey to Bethlehem was invented simply to prove Jesus 
of the lineage of David, and therefore in line with Messianic 
prophecy. He Himself claimed to be the Son of David, He 
was repeatedly hailed as such by the populace, and that 
claim was not disputed. It was not necessary to invent the 
Bethlehem episode in order to conciliate Jewish prejudice, 
for no Jew was likely to be deceived by a fabrication so con- 
temptible. Moreover, by the time that the Gospels came to 
be written Jesus had ceased to be regarded as a Jew; He 
was known by the sublime and catholic titles of the Son of 
Man, and the Son of God. 

The stories which cluster round the Nativity of Jesus are 
full of idyllic charm. The exquisite story of the shepherds 
in the fields by night, who hear a wind-borne music in the 
starry sky, is St. Luke’s alone; on the other hand, St. 
Matthew only relates the striking episode of the visit of the 
Magians, guided by a star to the presence of the young Child. 
A common idea is expressed in both these stories, viz., the 
existence of some celestial commotion over a terrestrial event 
of the highest consequence to man. ‘The Oriental mind, 
steeped in the spirit of symbolism, and keenly sensitive to 
what may be called the ghostly element in the material 
universe, would perceive nothing incongruous in this idea. 
A belief in starry influences was common not only among 
the peoples of the East, but among many races of the West. 
The Magians had developed this belief into a science. The 
horoscope of man was written in the heavens; the stars were 
the signals of fate; the life of every man was forecast and 


24 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


foredoomed, a humble mechanism obscuring a mightier 
mechanism, a tiny wheel in the great timepiece of Eternity, 
acting m unison with central forces. It is, perhaps, worth 
notice that the researches of Kepler ascertained that in the 
year of Christ's birth a bright evanescent star, of consider- 
able magnitude did, in all probability, appear between 
Jupiter and Saturn. Such a phenomenon would be sure to 
attract attention, to excite awe, and to quicken emotion and 
imagination. Moreover, at this period a certain restlessness 
of thought was general. It was not confined to the Jews, 
though perhaps among them it was most active. A common 
presentiment of change, of events expected, yet unknown, 
filled all nations. Certain passages of the writings of Virgil 
are very remarkable as expressions of this temper ; they may 
almost claim to be Messianic prophecies. In Jerusalem 
there were men like Simeon, and women like Anna, who 
waited for the consolation of Israel, with a deepening con- 
viction that the hour was near. The vibrations of an im- 
mense hope ran through the world; the wind of dawn was 
already breathing through the darkness. What men expect 
they always are prepared to see; and it is by no means sur 
prising that Persian astrologers and simple Syrian shepherds 
alike, thrilled and stung to ecstasy by this inarticulate hope, 
should read and hear its messages in the midnight sky. 

On that starry night two fugitives from Nazareth, them- 
selves conscious not only of an awful hope but of an inelue- 
table force of fate that held their feet in an appointed way, 
climbed the limestone hill of Bethlehem. It was the season 
of early spring, probably toward the close of February; for 
at an earlier date than this it would not have been possible 
tor shepherds to spend the night on the open hillside with 
their flocks. The country through which these fugitives 
passed in the last stage of their journey is full of pastoral 


BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 25 


sweetness and charm. The town of Bethlehem, sitting 
squarely on its terraced height, surrounded with fig-trees and 
olive-orchards, still retains unaltered its outstanding features. 
It is a long grey cluster of houses, with no pretence of archi- 
tecture, a typical Syrian hill-town. At its base is the tomb 
of Rachel, the pathetic memorial of a man’s love, of a 
woman's travail and untimely death. Doubly significant 
would that tomb appear to this woman, whose hour had 
come; one can fancy the sidelong, tearful look of fear with 
which she would regard it. But there was more than fear in 
the heart of Mary that night. Slight as is the memorial of 
her, yet it is deeply suggestive of the sweetness of her na- 
ture, and especially of her devout piety of heart. Perhaps 
it was Ruth she remembered that night rather than Rachel— 
Ruth, the Moabitess, driven into Bethlehem by misfortune 
and calamity, to find herself the unexpected mother of a race 
of kings. Nor would she forget the ancient prophecy of 
Micah, that little as Bethlehem was among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of it should come One who should be the 
“Ruler of Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, 
from everlasting.” But whatever portents others saw in the 
Syrian sky that night, Mary saw none. Among the crowd of 
travelers, driven hither by a strange, almost unintelligible 
command, she stood alone, confused, unrecognized. It was 
an unforeseen and painful end of a journey full of sadness 
and alarm. No door was opened to the weary, suffering 
woman, not because the fine traditional hospitality of the Jew 
had failed, but because already every house was crowded to 
excess. ‘There was no place of refuge for her but a rough 
chamber, hewn in the limestone rock, and used as a stable. 
In that last refuge of the destitute there was born a few hours 
later the Child, who by His poverty was to make many 
rich. 


26 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


The story of the Magi, idyllic as it is, is obviously intro- 
duced by St. Matthew for a direct historical purpose. Their 
visit, in rousing the suspicion and alarm of Herod, had an 
immediate influence on the early life of Jesus. The very 
form of their question, “Where is He that is born King of 
the Jews?” would naturally excite a despot so unscrupulous 
and superstitious as Herod; and his reprisal is the massacre 
of the innocents. In all that follows Matthew sees the ful- 
fillment of prophecy. What is prophecy? It is two things 
—forth-telling and fore-telling. The prophets were in the 
main forth-tellers, the great burden of whose message was 
the exposition of moral and spiritual truth. But ever and 
again, in some condition of ecstasy, they saw the clouds clear 
from the sky of the future, and caught momentary glimpses 
of a light upon the far-off hills of Time. They saw, as men 
see in dreams, places, cities, countries, august figures, and 
movements, strangely vivid and real, and yet built of lumi- 
nous mist and shadow only, and they felt the incommunicable 
thrill of advancing destinies. They had only a limited com- 
prehension of their own words. They were unable to attach 
any entirely definite meaning to them. They spoke as men 
“in clear dream and solemn vision” speak, with vagueness, 
yet with a thrilling accent of conviction. It is not necessary 
to suppose that Hosea had any actual vision of Christ in 
Egypt, or Jeremiah any exact prevision of what events would 
make Rama a place of mourning. Nor can we suppose any 
deliberate effort on the part of Joseph and Mary to shape 
their Child’s life upon the plan of Messianic prophecy, which 
would of course have been collusion. Matthew rather en- 
deavors to illustrate these compulsions of Providence which 
touch every life, those relations of acts which seem intimately 
our own with higher forces, that control them by a superior 
gravity. In a word, it is not the veracity of the prophets 


BIR ane Ado VIE Or A ESOS 27, 


which he seeks to prove, but the sovereignty of God. Mys- 
tically propelled hither and thither, now by the compulsion 
of events, and now by inner voices of intuition that suggest 
angelic interferences, the Child and His parents suffer and 
do certain preappointed things, until at last they return to 
Nazareth, which for nearly thirty years is to be the home of 
Jesus. 

For one who was to be a poet and interpreter of Nature no 
better home could have been found than Nazareth. While 
it can scarcely be said that its situation is unrivaled in a 
country which displays at intervals almost every type of nat- 
ural beauty, yet it may be fairly claimed that it ranks among 
the loveliest spots of Palestine. Standing itself in a green 
hollow of the hills, it is close to the edge of a wide plateau, 
which commands enchanting prospects. In the foreground 
rise the hills of Gilboa, the historic land of Shechem, and 
Mount Tabor, the most exquisitely shaped of all the hills of 
Palestine. On the west is Mount Carmel; to the east the 
valley of the Jordan opens; northward lies the sea. ‘That 
aspect of neglect and desolation, which to-day makes so many 
parts of Palestine a keen disappointment to the traveler, is 
nowhere found in the neighborhood of Nazareth. Along its 
western side many valleys lie, as green and smiling as the 
far-famed Vale of Tempe. Nowhere is the atmosphere more 
lucid, the general configuration of the scenery more impres: 
sive. A cheerful fertility is its characteristic note. 

Nazareth, in common with most Syrian towns, presents to 
Western eyes an aspect of poverty. This poverty is, how- 
ever, more apparent than real. The Jew of Christ’s day, ex- 
cept when influenced by Roman example, paid scant attention 
to domestic architecture. He cared for neither the elegan- 
cies nor the display of wealth. Social distinctions of course 
existed, but they were not harshly pressed nor made too ap- 


28 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


parent. The original patriarchal spirit of the people had set- 
tled the common life on broad and tolerant democratic lines. 
That difficulty of approach between the rich and the poor, 
which is engendered by a wide disparity in the scale and 
method of life, has not to-day, and had not in Christ’s day, 
any existence in Nazareth. The little town showed none of 
those startling contrasts with which we are familiar in mod- 
ern life—the close contiguity of luxury and want, of silk and 
rags, of the palace and the hovel. The richest man in Naz- 
areth would dwell in a house not strikingly dissimilar from 
that occupied by the poorest. The natural wants of life were 
few and easily supplied; the artificial needs, which tormented 
and corrupted Roman life and at last became a mania, did 
not exist. At a distance of only five hours’ journey lay the 
Lake of Galilee, which in Christ’s day had become a Syrian 
Baiw, adorned by every extravagance of Roman luxury. 
Temples, palaces, and many splendid public buildings lined 
those shores, to-day so silent and deserted ; amid groves of 
palm and tropical gardens rose the villas of the rich; pleas- 
ure barges and hundreds of fishing-boats moved on those 
quiet waters; here life was seen in all its arrogance and 
pomp. But this new spirit of display had not invaded Naz- 
areth. Secluded in its amphitheatre of hills the little town 
remained true to patriarchal and democratic ideals. Its peo- 
ple lived a simple and sufficing life, much of it spent in the 
open air, much of it in kindly gossip. No one would think 
of scorning the young Jesus because He was a workman’s 
Child, or looking down upon His parents because they hap- 
pened to be humble folk. In this at least He was happy, 
His childhood knew nothing of the reproach and social dis- 
abilities of poverty. 

The pastoral simplicity of this Nazarene life left indelible 
traces on the mind of Jesus. One of the most charming 


BIS PEN i ANY Jeb Oba RS US. 29 


features of His early teachings is their homely truth. He 
speaks of leaven hid in a bushel of meal, of women grinding 
at the mill, of sowing and reaping, of flowers and birds, of a 
hundred sights and sounds, episodes and small adventures, 
of rural life. It is a peasant’s characteristic view of life, and 
all the sweeter for its accent of intimacy and experience. 
Much of this hidden life of Christ may be discovered in these 
parables and teachings. The good housewife baking bread, 
or searching diligently for a lost piece of silver, surely has 
beside her a young Boy, who watches her with serious eyes 
and kindling interest. The selfish householder, refusing to 
come down and open the door to the benighted traveler, is 
some churlish Nazarene, whose harsh voice reached a wake- 
ful Child, lying happy at His mother’s side. He who spoke 
of weather signs to those who saw not the signs of the times, 
had often watched the evening sky aflame behind Mount 
Carmel. The only life He knew with accuracy was the life 
of the poor—a life modest, contented, and laborious. The 
only pleasures He knew were the simple pleasures of the 
poor. The larger and more complex life of men in great 
cities habitually repels Him. His entire indifference to 
riches sprang from a conviction to which His early life gave 
the authority of a principle, that the highest dignity of 
thought is consonant with the greatest humility of circum- 
stance. Under these lowly roofs of Nazareth He framed the 
highest philosophy of life that man has ever known; in con- 
stant converse with its people He learned the secrets of the 
human heart; and up these stony paths, to the breezy 
heights above the town, He often passed, to find Himself 
alone with the sublimities of Nature, and to realize the pres- 
ence of the Highest in the passing shows of earth and sky. 
Secluded as Nazareth was, it must not, however, be im- 
agined that it was wholly cut off from all intercourse with 


30 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the outer world. Jerusalem itself was but three days’ jour- 
ney, and, as we have seen, all the pagan splendors of the Sea 
of Galilee, renamed Tiberias, from the imposing city which 
Herod was then rearing on its shore, was but five hours dis- 
tant. One of the great caravan routes to Damascus passed 
through the town; others were contiguous. One can only 
conjecture, not wholly without probability, that these cara- 
vans may have dropped some seeds of wider truth and 
knowledge into the receptive mind of Jesus. They per- 
formed a part in the dissemination of ideas much as our own 
railways do. Echoes of a larger thought came with them ; 
strange whisperings, it may be, of the dying faiths of Egypt, 
or of the living faiths of India and the further Hast. More- 
over, the population of the province was composed of many 
elements. It included not merely Romans, but Greeks, 
Arabs, and Phoenicians. In a caravan were to be found not 
only merchants, but a sprinkling of scholars, philosophers, 
searchers after truth, and citizens of the world. In the study 
of a new system of truth we are bound to analyze the com- 
ponent elements, and these elements are usually various. 
The resemblance between many things in Christian thought 
and the religious system of these ancient civilizations is very 
marked. In the Egyptian conception of God as light, in its 
doctrine of the soul and immortality, in its ethical instruc- 
tions—the value of sanctity, the need for purification that the 
soul may approach God, and the singular use of the term 
“justified before God”—we see gleams, and more than 
eleams of Christian truth. Still more wonderful is the cen- 
tral concept of Egyptian theology of a Son of God, dead, 
buried, and risen again. Buddhism, in the same way, an- 
ticipates Christianity “in its universalism and ethical char- 
acter ;” in its primary insistence that “all men may be 
saved, and that they are saved not at all by outward rites or 


BIR TRAN Do PARTY (Ene Ol JESUS 31 


mechanical performance, but by themselves being emanci- 
pated from inward evil.” And the spirit of Buddha’s life in 
its boundless self-sacrifice and piety is the spirit of the life 
of Cnrist. Resemblances so striking as these can be scarcely 
accidental. They are, at least, profoundly suggestive. 

New truths rarely arise in the human mind by mere intuition. 
There is almost always some process of innoculation, some 
tiny germ planted silently, it may seem by chance, which in 
due course is quickened into life. The biographer of Jesus 
has to account for thirty hidden years. When once these 
fugitive Galileans have passed into Nazareth the curtain 
drops, and the wonder-story is broken off sharply and finally. 
We hear no more of portents in the sky, of the enmity of 
sovereigns, of the curiosity of pilgrims. No one appears to 
have asked a single question about the future of the Child 
whose birth had aroused such memorable interest. Had any 
pilgrim, inspired by either enmity or curiosity, desired to 
find Him the course was easy, the clues of discovery were at 
hand. At the close of these hidden years the Son of Mary, 
whose birth-story is already half forgotten, or cherished only 
as a legend in a few pious hearts, suddenly emerges into 
fame as the most daring religious thinker of His time. He 
speaks out of the fulness of a mind profound, original, and 
devout. He commands horizons of thought and aspiration 
undreamed of by the Jew. The greatest religious thinkers 
of His day pale their ineffectual fires before His new-risen 
splendors. How can we account for this extraordinary de- 
velopment in One who lived remote from the great centres of 
thought, and ignorant of the higher branches of the fastidi- 
ous religious culture of His day? Manifestly we are driven 
back upon conjecture. We remember the many curious proc- 
esses by which the seeds of new thought are distributed in 
days when many minds are occupied by common problems 


32 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of religion. We are bound to consider the possibilities of 
such thought finding its way into Nazareth. And hence 
there grows within the mind a picture of the serious Child 
mingling with many men of strange speech who halted with 
the caravans in the market-place of Nazareth, ever curious 
and attentive with the eagerness of an opening and hungry 
mind, and finding in chance phrases, in some pregnant word 
of traveling philosopher or priest, clues and suggestions 
which gave an unsuspected bias to His own widening 
thought. 

Once only is the curtain lifted from those hidden years. 
St. Luke narrates a journey which the family made to Jeru- 
salem when Jesus was twelve years old, and it is chiefly re- 
markable for the impression it conveys of Christ's early ma- 
turity of mind. We find Him questioning the doctors of 
the Temple with such acuteness that they were astonished 
at His understanding. We find also some presentiment of 
His vocation already working in the Boy’s mind; He must 
be about His Father’s business. The conclusion of the 
story is that Jesus returned to Nazareth and was subject 
unto His parents. But between boyhood and mature man- 
hood a wide space intervenes. Surely this was not the only 
journey Jesus made—the single and solitary excursion of 
thirty years. In the days of youth the blood is full of wan- 
dering and restless instincts. Then, if at all, the feet are 
drawn into the paths of travel. Did Jesus in those years 
turn His face toward the further Hast, cradle and centre of 
all religions? Is the prophecy of Hosea, “Out of Egypt 
have I called my Son,” capable of a wider and more accurate 
interpretation than St. Matthew gives it? Is it permissible 
to imagine the young Carpenter of Nazareth, armed with the 
tools of His craft, wandering among the palms and temples 
of other countries than His own, in which religion still re- 


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\ BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF JESUS 33 


tained the spirit of mysticism long lost in the chilly Pharis- 
aic formalism of Judea? In some caravan, moving slowly 
over those violet hills at dawn, was He found, who latterly 
conceived Himself as one with a mission for the whole 
world? We can but follow the faint pencilings of conjec- 
ture on such a theme, and yet there is nothing in the known 
story of the youth of Christ to forbid such conjectures. The 
intellectual and spiritual development of Jesus must always 
remain a mystery; but any suggestion, not inherently im- 
possible or irreverent, that may help us to comprehend the 
process of that development should be welcomed. 

On one matter, however, there cannot be the slighest 
doubt: Jesus was trained in a devout Jewish household. 
He would be taught the Shema, a sort of elementary Jewish 
catechism, by His mother as soon as He could speak. He 
would know the Psalms by heart, and would attend the ex- 
positions of the Law in the synagogue at Nazareth. The 
rule of minute religious instruction in a Jewish home was 
fixed and invariable, and it afforded a noble scheme of edu- 
cation. The great histories of the Bible would be singularly 
real and vivid to a youth who looked daily on the plains 
where Abraham dwelt, the hill that was the scene of Elyjah’s 
sacrifice, and the mountains where Saul perished. Great 
historic traditions, magnificent expressions of spiritual aspir- 
ation, firm and clear statements of ethical truth, were the 
food on which the mind and soul of Jesus thrived. Slowly 
His mind came to a knowledge of its own compass, force, 
and originality. And slowly, also, the presentiment of voca- 
tion, of which the Child’s visit to Jerusalem affords an en- 
chanting glimpse, deepened into a sense of destiny. Nazareth 
gave Him precisely that “shelter to grow ripe,” that “leisure 
to grow wise,” so necessary, but so rarely granted to those 


whose high fate it is to speak to the inmost heart of man, or 
3 


d4 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


shape his progress; and to the last the restfulness of those 
days clung to Him like a fragrance, producing in the minds 
of all who knew Him an impression of fathomless serenity, 
of peace inscrutable and infinite. 


CHAPTER II 
JOHN THE BAPTIST 


THE years spent at Nazareth, quiet and unmemorable as 
they seemed in outward events, must have been characterized 
by much inward stress of spirit. All growth is painful, and 
it is only through contention and dubiety of mind that the 
soul finds the full compass of its powers. He who pictures 
these hidden years at Nazareth as a perfect idyll of peace 
and contentment is surely forgetful of the normal processes 
by which unusual genius is developed. Men of genius have 
rarely been comprehended by their relations, and their de- 
velopment has usually been marked by variance and colli- 
sion. One of the sadly wise sayings of Jesus was that a 
prophet has no honor in his own country, and it is doubt- 
less reminiscent of His own experience. Other events 
showed that His own brothers—or step-brothers, as they 
probably were—and even His mother, failed to understand 
His aims. With all the exquisite sweetness of His disposi- 
tion there was united a force and daring of temper that must 
have been extremely disconcerting to these simple-minded 
friends and kinsfolk. The rising stream of new religious 
life was already beginning to submerge the old landmarks of 
Mosaic tradition. Teachers like Hillel and Philo were ut- 
tering axioms which Jesus was hereafter to fashion into a 
new ethical revelation. Quickened by the growing life within 
Him, stimulated by the new life around Him, Jesus must 


often have spoken His mind to this humble audience in 
35 


36 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Nazareth in such a way as to excite their indignation and 
their fear. They probably regarded Him as a freethinker 
whose genius was His peril. It was so, many centuries 
later, that Spinosa, the most “ God-inebriated ” of all modern 
Jewish minds, was regarded by his contemporaries ; and the 
theological animus of the conventional Jew is something that 
centuries cannot change. 

How many times did Jesus climb those stony paths te the 
broad plateau above Nazareth that He might escape house- 
hold contention, and find Himself alone in the healing silen- 
ces of Nature? How many times was the heart of Mary 
pierced by the sword of a great fear as she watched the 
strange unfolding of a mind whose subtlety and depth she 
could not comprehend? That these things really happened 
we need no Gospel to assure us. Nothing is more remark- 
able in Christ than that from the moment of His public min- 
istry He has nothing to learn. There is no doubling back 
upon the path of truth, no hesitation; for Him the problem 
is solved. But this perfect finish of mind must needs have 
had its processes, and of these processes Nazareth was the 
theatre. ‘The prime effort of His life was to settle religion 
on a broad and true base. To do so much that the Jew re- 
garded as essential to piety had to be set aside as trivial. 
Customs to which tradition had given the sanctity of duties, 
traditions which had usurped the place of truths, had to be 
disregarded. Full truth is only reached by iconoclasm. 
The strain of spirit in such intellectual adventures is great ; 
their effect upon others who only partly comprehend is dis- 
ruptive and full of pain. And it was by such disciplines as 
these that Jesus reached His full development of mind. 
Side by side with much that was idyllic in the life at Naza- 
reth ran sequences of suffering, reaching onward to the 
tragic. 


J GUN EL Ee a ae 1s ir 37 


Many times Jesus must have asked, in those long 
meditations on the hills of Nazareth, why it was He 
waited, for what it was He waited, and when the call to 
public service would prove irresistible. They were not the 
questions of an ambitious mind, but of a mind keenly con- 
scious of advancing destiny. These questions were now 
about to be answered, and the patiently awaited sign was to 
be given. 

In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberias 
there arose in the deserts of Judea, lying between Kedron 
and the Dead Sea, a young preacher of singular individuality 
and force by the name of John. He at once attracted atten- 
tion as much by the manner of his life as by his message. 
It is characteristic of the voluptuousness of the Oriental 
mind that it is constantly regulated by a strong ascetic tend- 
ency. Strange and even fearful abstinences are practiced in 
the East to-day, and those who practice them are esteemed 
holy. John had from his boyhood been trained in the most 
austere ascetism. He had elected to live in the desert, not 
far from the shore of the Dead Sea, where at that time many 
anchorites dwelt. He is vividly described to us as wearing 
raiment of camel’s hair, with a leathern girdle upon his 
loins—the traditional dress of Elijah—and feeding upon 
locusts and wild honey. Far from the false and fevered life 
of cities, living amid scenes of incomparable desolation and 
sterility, finding in them a school of solitude and discipline, 
John nursed the fires of a passionate and impetuous spirit. 
None of the sweet influences of nature were here, and had 
they been they would have made no appeal to him. The 
land was not only savage in itself, but it seemed scarred and 
bruised by the hand of visible judgments that had passed 
over it. And as the scene was, so was the man. He was 
virile, terrible, untameable, a true son of the wilderness, into 


38 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


whose blood all the harshness and grandeur of the desert 
had entered. 

Such a life had nothing in it distinctly Jewish. There has 
never been upon the earth a creature more enamored of ma- 
terial comfort than the Jew. The smiling aspects of nature, 
the land flowing with milk and honey, he loved; but the 
desert he abhorred. Jewish religion is also in itself the 
most social of all religions. Many of its most sacred func- 
tions are scarcely distinguishable from family festivals. It 
is a religion of geniality, making much of domestic affec- 
tions, and keenly sensitive to the joyousness of life. In 
short, the Jew by nature and habit finds ascetism repugnant, 
and it is therefore somewhat remarkable that such a life as 
John’s should have excited popular sympathy. 

There is, however, a reason for this sympathy, which had 
its root in one of the greatest periods of Jewish history. If 
we except Moses, who was the real founder of the nation, 
there is no man in Jewish history whose fame stands so high 
as Elijah’s. What story is there so thrilling, so impressive, 
at times so overwhelmingly dramatic, as the story of this 
Bedouin of the desert, sweeping down in fire and thunder 
from the caves of Carmel, to subdue kings and terrify a 
whole people into submission by the force of a single imperi- 
ous will? The very name of Elijah is to this day terrible in 
the Hast; never was there memory so potent and implacable. 
The manner of his removal from the earth added to the 
superstitious awe which clothed his name. He was believed 
not to have died; to have vanished from the earth only to 
halt upon some dim borderland between life and death, ready 
to reappear at any time; to have become a supernatural 
man, who might return, and assuredly would return in his 
chariot of flame, when some great national crisis called for 
him. Such legends are common; they are associated with 


JOHN TERE JBAE TIS. 39 


King Arthur, and even with Francis Drake. It is a curious 
testimony to man’s inherent conviction of immortality, that 
he finds it difficult to believe that a great hero is really dead. 
But to the Jew, the sense of Elijah’s real presence in the na- 
tional life, his incompleted work upon the national destiny, 
was not so much a legend as acreed. It was an impassioned 
belief, increasing in vehemence as the times grew darker. 
The deeper the despair and impotence of the nation the 
more eager became the hope that Elijah would return. He 
would surely come again and smite the house of Herod as 
he had smitten the house of Ahab. The desert would once 
more travail in strange birth, and from it would come the re- 
deeming Titan. 

No doubt there was some conscious or unconscious imita- 
tion of Elijah in John’s method of life. It was not servile 
imitation; it was merely the expression of a general convic- 
tion that the prophet must needs be a man of austere char- 
acter, whose proper dwelling-place was the wilderness. The 
ereatest of all prophets had been such a man; what more 
natural than to suppose that any future prophet must con- 
form to the type organized by Elijah? So it happened, that 
in spite of all the sweet and joyous elements of ordinary 
Jewish religion, the Jew still retained an admiration of as- 
ceticism when it was associated with prophetic claims. The 
Jew never traveled through this awful Judean wilderness 
without some thrill of patriotic hope. He saw in the sacred 
but detested scene the cradle of his deliverer. He trembled 
with a sense, at once joyous and fearful, of an unseen pres- 
ence in the air. The very night-wind, crying in the clefts of 
savage rocks, was as the voice of Elijah crying in the wilder- 
ness. Suddenly all that was mythical and legendary became 
defined. An indubitable figure of flesh and blood, stern, im- 
placable, vehement as Elijah himself, had appeared in the 


40 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Judean desert. Once more a voice of thunder rang through 
the land, a presence harshly majestic confronted the nation, 
a soul of fire began to prophesy. The most heroic episode 
of Jewish history stood revived in John, and in a few months 
his fame had filled the land. 

John’s fame was purely popular. He exercised little or 
no influence over the priestly classes. Jesus said that the 
prevalent estimate of John among the Scribes and Pharisees 
was that he had a devil. It can hardly be wondered at that 
they thought ill of him, since he thought ill of them. He 
denounced them as vipers, and asked in mockery who had 
taught them to flee from the wrath to come? He waxed 
bitterly ironical over their boasted descent from the lois of 
Abraham, saying that God could fashion from the stones of 
the desert sons of Abraham as good as they. His audiences 
were composed of persons whom the strict Jew regarded as 
pariahs. His iconoclastic spirit was seen in his institution 
of the rite of baptism. Ablution or immersion was common 
in the Hast, but it had no place in Jewish ritual, except as a 
rite by which proselytes were admitted into the privileges of 
Israel. As John practiced it, it was meant to supersede all 
the elaborate ritual of Temple worship. There is no record 
of John ever having entered the Temple to fulfil the tradi- 
tional duties of Jewish piety. His aversion from the estab- 
lished religion was complete. He had no faith in its forms, 
and complete contempt for its exponents. It sounds cynical 
to say that he who denounces a priestly aristocracy is sure 
of popularity with the common people; it is not,- however, 
cynicism so much as mournful reflection drawn from the 
general history of such aristocracies. John would not have 
found a nation behind him in his attack upon the priesthood, 
unless that priesthood had already forfeited respect and in- 
curred resentment. John stood toward the Judaism of his 


PON POETS iB Behl LoD 41 


day much as Luther stood toward Catholicism; and his de- 
mand was for the abolition of empty forms, the simplifica- 
tion of religion, the revival of ethical sincerity, the return to 
the purer and more austere elements of primitive Judaism. 
Certainly no prophet ever excelled John in that peculiar 
faculty of moral indignation, which was the Hebrew proph- 
et’s most distinctive gift. His oratory was filled with these 
violent and vivid images which in all ages had appealed pow- 
erfully to the imagination of the Jews. He spoke of the axe 
laid to the root of the tree, of the flail of judgment thunder- 
ing on the threshing-floor, of the chaff burned up with un- 
quenchable fire. Men of this order, arising suddenly among 
the easily excited populations of the Hast, have often driven 
whole peoples wild with a sort of frantic hysteria. They ap- 
pear as heralds of fate, voices preluding the breaking up of 
the times, and the birth of eras. But itis usually found that 
such men exhaust their genius upon a narrow range of theme, 
and are not fertile in ideas. When the prophet descends 
from his tripod he is even as other men, save for a superior 
sincerity. These characteristics and limitations are very 
marked in John. When he is pressed to give direct ethical 
instruction to his converts he has little to say that is novel, 
nothing that is striking. His idea of charity does not go be- 
yond conventional and unsacrificial benevolence. “He that 
hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none. And 
he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” His advice to the 
publicans is that they shall exact no more than is appointed 
them, and to the soldiers that they should abstain from vio- 
lent behavior, and be content with their wages. His pro- 
eramme does not go beyond a moderate reform of manners, 
and the correction of some outstanding popular abuses. 
After the manner of all iconoclasts, he finds it much easier to 
destroy error than to reinvigorate Truth, and give it new cur- 


42 LHE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


rency. He has no conception of any new and authoritative 
system of religion. His mind is destitute of those great fer- 
tilizing ideas out of which new religions grow. His moral 
force is overwhelming ; but apart from one range of ideas, in 
expounding which he is truly inspired, and speaks with the 
sublime accent of the prophet, his mind is commonplace. 
One thing, however, in John’s ministry is both very strik- 
ing and very beautiful. He has a presentiment, not only that 
the revelation of the true Messiah is at hand, but that the 
Messiah is already on the earth, living unknown among the 
people. He himself does not know who He is, or where 
He lives. It is evident that the wonder-stories of the birth 
of Jesus had never reached him; for had he known them it 
is incredible that he had not long ago made the acquaintance 
of One who was his junior by only half a year. It is even 
more difficult to imagine how such incidents could have faded 
out of the general mind at all, had they really happened. 
The only rational hypothesis by which this ignorance can be 
explained is that the secret of Jesus was guarded jealously, 
perhaps through fear, and that His seclusion at Nazareth was 
so complete that the clues of His early history were quite ob- 
literated. But it is, at all events, certain that John had not 
learned the secret. He was aware of no rival when he com- 
menced his ministry. He could not but be aware also of 
how he himself came to be regarded. The Pharisees, his 
deadliest enemies, showed themselves uneasy at the extraor- 
dinary resemblance he bore to the traditional Messiah, and 
not only debated the question among themselves, but came 
to him with the plain inquiry, “ Who art thou?” A man less 
resolutely honest might have yielded to this persistence of 
popular acclaim. He might have come to see in himself the 
signs of a predestined greatness, as many a self-intoxicated 
enthusiast has done. And what was there to prevent such a 


JOHN Tit BAPTIST 43 


course? Simply the force of a presentiment which amounted 
to an inspiration. He does not waver for an instant in his 
testimony that he is not the Christ. He is convinced that 
the utmost part he has to play is that of a precursor or a 
herald. The real humility of a mind, naturally authoritative 
and impatient, is beautifully revealed in a series of sayings 
which he utters about the coming of Christ. John declares 
that One comes after him, who is preferred before him; that 
this new prophet will increase as he himself decreases; that 
he is not worthy to unloose the shoe’s latchet of the real 
Christ. Here was a character surely nobler than Elijah’s, 
for while Elijah regarded his successor as his inferior, and 
doubted if the prophetic mantle could descend to him, John 
wished nothing better for himself than extinction in the fuller 
light that was to come. However limited was John’s range 
of thought, none has ever yet excelled him in magnanimity 
of temper. 

This note of expectation in John’s ministry must have had 
a powerful influence over popular thought. It excited spec- 
ulation, it kindled hope. Who was this mystic personage, 
whose footfall John already heard approaching? As John’s 
fame spread this question came to be debated throughout a 
hundred villages and cities. Some caravan passing through 
Nazareth would bring the news to the home of Mary, and all 
the memories of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, all the episodes 
and tokens of thirty patient years took sudden coherence and 
significance. The news came to her heart with a shock of 
triumph; to Jesus with a shock of awe. Or was it fear that 
Mary felt, when what had faded to a dream became insistent, 
tangible; was it joy that Jesus felt, when the sweet and 
gracious consciousness grew on Him that His hour had 
come? With what awestruck eyes did Mother and Son look 
on one another in those days! With what timidity in the 


44 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


one, what growing ecstasy in the other, did each catch the 
vibrations of that call of destiny, daily growing louder! 
Sacred in every great life is the hour of high resolution, when 
the dedicated soul accepts its fate; but nowhere so sacred as 
in this lowly home of Nazareth, where the fate of the world 
itself hung trembling. If a voice warned John that the true 
Messiah was at hand, did not that same voice warn Jesus 
that the time had come when this secluded life of Nazareth 
must end? Silently He made His preparations, as silently 
took farewell of these simple Nazarenes with whom His life 
had passed, and these green hills among which He would 
dwell no more. 

May we trust tradition for any true portrait of the Master? 
There is but one extant description, written long after His 
death, and doubtless, so far as its literary form goes, a for- 
gery; and yet it sums up a general and received impression 
of Christ’s appearance. It is supposed to have been written 
by Lentulus, a pro-consul of Judea, who thus describes our 
Lord: “He is tall of stature, and His aspect is sweet and 
full of power, so that they who look upon Him may at once 
love and fear Him. The hair of His head is of the color of 
wine: as far as the ears it is straight and without glitter ; 
from the ears to the shoulders it is curled and glossy, and 
from the shoulders it descends over the back, divided into 
two parts, after the manner of the Nazarene. His brow is 
pure and even; His countenance without a spot, but adorned 
with a gentle glow; His expression bland and open; His 
nose and mouth are of perfect beauty ; His beard is copious, 
forked, and of the color of His hair; His eyes are blue and 
very bright. In reproof and threatening He is terrible, in 
teaching and exhortation He is gentle and loving. The grace 
and majesty of His appearance are marvelous.” ‘This is He 
whom we see passing in the early dawn along the road lead- 


PO brNG Pith eB Are TS 1 45 


ing downward to the Jordan valley, where John is baptizing. 
A little later, and the invincible presentiment of John is 
fulfilled. Among the crowd at Bethabara John discerns 
the face that had long filled his dreams, and utters the im- 
mortal encomium, “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh 
away the sins of the world!” 


CHAPTER II 
THE INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 


No two temperaments could manifest wider disparity than 
did those of John and Jesus. John’s attitude to society was 
bitterly critical and hostile, while Christ's was tolerant and 
genial. John was by nature and choice a recluse, while 
Jesus loved the stir of life. John had the peculiar dignity 
which belongs to a lofty and austere character, but he had 
little charm; Jesus possessed a power of charm that was fell; 
even by young children. No one can imagine John taking 
up little children in his arms and blessing them, or sharing 
in marriage festivals, or mingling freely with the people in 
familiar intercourse; but all these things Jesus did out of 
the affectionate warmth of a nature eminently social. Per- 
haps this disparity of temperament strengthened the bond 
of friendship between the two teachers, for it is not uncom- 
mon in friendship for one to admire in the other qualities 
which he himself does not possess. At all events it is cer- 
tain that the friendship between John and Jesus was firm 
and constant. It was never threatened by the jealousy 
which too often poisons the relations of public men, although 
the disciples of both teachers more than once tried to make 
mischief. John never spoke of Jesus except in terms of af- 
fectionate reverence; and Jesus, throughout His ministry, 
expressed the warmest admiration for John. If Jesus was 


to John “the Lamb of God,” John was to Jesus “a burning 
46 


INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 47 


and a shining light,” incomparably greater than the greatest 
of the prophets. 

It must be remembered that both teachers were young 
men, and they were inspired by common hopes and enthusi- 
asms. Moral ardor makes light of disparity of tempera- 
ment; there is no union surer than the union of common 
ideas. Jesus soon came to use the very language of John. 
He denounces the scribes and Pharisees as serpents and 
vipers, and these strong expressions of disgust which He 
learned at Bethabara were on His lips throughout His min- 
istry. He adopted baptism as a sign of penitence, and in 
His last address to His disciples told them to baptize among 
all nations. He incorporated John’s message in His own, 
omitting and extenuating nothing, but greatly enlarging 
and supplementing it. It is probable that before the visit 
to Bethabara Jesus had made some tentative efforts at teach- 
ing among His own people. The phrase used by St. Luke, 
that Jesus grew “in favor with God and man,” seems to 
point to some form of public life and notoriety in Nazareth. 
It is hardly to be believed that a mind so full and ardent 
had made no effort to utter itself through all the years that 
lay between boyhood and mature manhood. Butif the voice 
of Christ had already spoken to the world it was only in 
accents of idyllic sweetness. He had spoken as a poet and 
idealist, in words of lyric charm. None had as yet been 
offended in Him, for He had given no cause of offence to 
any. His knowledge of the world had not yet included the 
sadder and the baser sides of life. But at Bethabara these 
wider and sadder perspectives were opened to Him. John 
communicated to Him the fire of his own intensity and vehe- 
mence, and He speedily shared John’s hatreds and indigna- 
tions. The life of the public man, full of dispute and con- 
troversy, animated by the fervor of battle, quick with moral 


48 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


fire, stood revealed to Him. It was a life fertile in occasions 
of repugnance, provocative of pain, distasteful in a hundred 
ways to the temper of the poet, the mystic, the idealist; and 
yet it was the only kind of life possible to the sincere re- 
former of society. It was into this life that John initiated 
the young teacher of Nazareth, and the impact John made 
upon the mind of Christ was ineffaceable. 

Just as we may trace to the influence of John the passion- 
ate repugnance with which Jesus came to regard the relig- 
ious aristocracy of the time, so one of the most striking epi- 
sodes in the life of Jesus, the temptation in the wilderness, 
is due to the same influence. It is by no means surprising 
that Jesus should have fallen for a time under the spell of 
John’s asceticism, and have allowed Himself to be deflected 
by it from His true path in life. There is something deeply 
impressive in the ascetic character. Men in general are so 
much in bondage to physical senses and appetites that they 
cannot but regard with wonder those for whom such bondage 
does not exist. But in the degree that the spectator of as- 
cetic virtues is himself pure and unworldly, mere wonder is 
rapidly intensified into emulation. The stern, and almost 
fierce renunciation of such a life, the solitude, the isolation, 
the singleness of purpose, the insatiable passion of self-con- 
quest, will powerfully appeal to him. The man who seeks 
the seclusion of the cloister is but in rare instances the bat- 
tered worldling, who has found the temptation of the senses 
too much for him. More frequently he is a man of delicate 
sensibility and fastidious purity of life. Jor exalted spiri- 
tuality of temperament, the law of asceticism is easy, natural, 
and alluring. This, at least, is the consistent witness of the 
great religious orders, and it is the explanation of the power 
which they have wielded over the highest class of mind. 

The story of the temptation in the wilderness, read in the 


INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 49 


light of John’s asceticism, becomes easily intelligible. In 
nothing is Jesus so instinctively a Jew as in His love for the 
familiar and idyllic side of Nature, and in His corresponding 
repugnance to her harsher aspects. The exquisite homeli- 
ness of His teaching, on which we have already remarked, is 
seen in relation to Nature as well as life. His nature-pict- 
ures are of birds, and fields, and flowers, of wheat and tares, 
of sowers and reapers—the simple idylls of the countryside 
—never of the appalling terrors of the desert. The modern 
erowth of the picturesque has substituted grandeur for terror, 
and those bred in this late cult will find it difficult to imagine 
that Nature can be terrible. Yet it is but a century ago that 
men regarded mountains with horror, and the passage of the 
Alps as an appalling experience. Remembering this, we 
may perhaps be able to imagine how Jesus would regard the 
kind of scenery with which John was familiar. All His life 
accustomed to the gently rounded hills of Nazareth, the charm 
and sweetness of a fertile landscape, Jesus was now, under 
the attraction of asceticism, suddenly thrust into a land ab- 
solutely desolate. Tradition identifies the scene of the 
temptation as a certain hill called Quarantania, which rises 
from the Judean plain; it is at all events noticeable that 
tradition affirms that the temptation took place in this very 
Judean desert which was the school of John’s austerities. 
But John had known no other scenery; St. Luke asserts 
that he was in the desert until the time of his showing unto 
Israel. The inference is that while yet very young he had 
become an anchorite, and his sense of the horrors of the 
wilderness had long since been blunted. If, then, it was at 
John’s suggestion, or with his acquiescence, that Jesus now 
made the experiment of asceticism in this Judean wilderness, 
John would be no fit judge of the effect it would be likely to 


produce on a nature so sensitive. He would no more be 
4 


50 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


able to estimate this effect than a person of robust nerves 
can understand what is suffered by a sensitive child shut up 
in the dark. 

The analogy of the sensitive child in the dark must not 
be pressed too hard, and yet it may fairly indicate what 
Jesus suffered in this strange experiment. He had lived all 
His life among kinsfolk and friends, and now He is utterly 
alone. He had known all the happy reciprocities of domes- 
tic affection and social intercourse ; the cheerful friendships, 
the conversations beside the village well or at the cottage 
door on still evenings, when heart leaped to heart, and the 
talk drifted into intimacy. ‘The vision which allures the eye 
in Nazareth is of the tall workman, making ox-yokes in con- 
tented labor, the Son on whose arm the widowed mother 
leans, on whose knees the little children climb. The most 
familiar path of Nature He has trod is the stony track lead- 
ing to the wide plateau above the little town, from which he 
has seen at sunset Carmel flushed with rose, and the Jordan 
valley deep in purple shadow, and far away to northward 
the azure of the sea. And now, all at once, he is confronted 
with a new Nature, which seems no more benevolent and joy- 
ous, but evil and malignant. These scarred and frowning 
rocks, this bloomless waste, this gloomy illimitable plain, 
compose a fitting theatre for diabolic energies. Night falls 
upon the scene, and the darkness overwhelms the spirit. 
The ery of the wind or of the wild beast thrills the nerves. 
The immitigable silence is itself a horror. The stars alone 
shine familiar; elsewhere there is neither sight nor sound 
that is not fearful and detestable. Hunger gives a new 
poignancy to all mental and physical sensations. Stirrings 
of the air, scarce noticeable by the normal sense, fall upon 
the spirit like a blow. There are buffoting hands that leap 
from the mantle of the darkness, and the laughter as of 


INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 51 


fiends among the caverned rocks. Strange pictures run like 
a frieze of fire upon that darkness, till at last from its chaotic 
tumult the form of the Evil One himself coheres, emerges, 
and approaches. In a scene where all is monstrous and de- 
formed, under a strain of mind and body quite unfamiliar 
and abnormal, the tortured imagination falls a prey to all 
the horror of diabolism, at last projecting on the air the 
very shape of the Enemy of Souls himself. Such is the 
work of asceticism upon a nature eminently social, joyous, 
and sensitive. 

The temptation in the wilderness was not the less real be- 
cause we may thus explain it as the effect of asceticism upon 
a peculiarly sensitive imagination. lLuther’s struggle with 
the Evil One in his cell at the Wartburg was real enough, 
and even horribly real, although the phantom existed in his 
eye alone. The temptations of a Francis of Assisi or of a 
St. Anthony were in the same manner real though but spec- 
tres of the mind. Or, to take a far more ancient story, was 
not the struggle of Jacob at the brook Jabbok a conflict 
really confined to the theatre of the mind? Here are many 
of the elements which we find in the temptation of Jesus— 
elements which indeed are common to all such experiences. 
Jacob, in the grip of a great anxiety, finds himself alone be- 
side the brook amid the gathering darkness. The fear of his 
brother passes by subtle changes into a terror of the dark- 
ness itself. Time dwindles to a point, and all his life is 
concentrated into a few agonized moments. The darkness 
takes a shape, becomes as it were a man under whose invisi- 
ble violence Jacob is forced to his knees. He wrestles, as 
for his very life, till the breaking of the day. He is plunged 
into the vortices of a horror so great that his very life, and 
certainly his sanity, is in peril. When the morning comes 
peace returns, and more than peace—a sense of triumph over 


52 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


ghostly forces which had threatened the very roots of being. 
To the unimaginative such a story may appear absurd, but it 
is true in fact. In such moments the imagination controls 
the senses. Or perhaps we may say the imagination super- 
sedes the senses, becoming a new and finer sense, so that 
men see the invisible, hear the inaudible, and touch the in- 
tangible. Personality is an abyss so deep, and so little 
explored, that a hundred things may happen in its inmost 
depths which the normal and conventional human creature 
may regard as incredible. In such a case the normal human 
creature is no judge; but if he will approach the problem 
not in arrogance but docility of spirit, he will admit that 
there are many things in earth and heaven not dreamed of 
in his philosophy. 

Both St. Matthew and St. Luke give a detailed account of 
the temptation ; St. Mark contents himself with a single sen- 
tence, and St. John passes over it altogether. Obviously 
what Jesus endured in these forty days and nights must 
have been related by His own lips, for there was no specta- 
tor of His struggles. Beneath the highly pictorial account 
afforded us by the Evangelists there is a firmly outlined 
ethical basis. The first temptation is a temptation of the 
flesh, but entirely free from the grossness which in medizval 
history disfigures such temptations. It is the natural and 
relatively innocent temptation to break the vow of abstinence 
by creating bread to satisfy the fleshly hunger. Christ’s re- 
ply is remarkable as an assertion of the right of the spirit to 
control the body: “Man liveth not by bread alone but by 
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”—a 
familiar quotation from the writings of Moses. The second 
temptation, taking the order of St. Matthew, which here dif- 
fers from that observed by St. Luke, is a temptation to the 
selfish use of miraculous power or the abuse of faith. God 


INFLUENCE OF JOHN ON JESUS 53 


has promised that the angels shall have charge over the man 
who trusteth in Him; why not put the promise to the test 
by the suicidal folly of leaping from a pinnacle of the 
Temple? There is something at once childish and cynical in 
this suggestion, unless indeed it be meant to imply that de- 
rangement of reason which struggles with the gloomy horror 
of suicide. The reply of Christ again breathes the spirit of 
a temperate wisdom: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God.” The third temptation is more intelligible; it is to 
snatch at power by the sacrifice of conscience. The king- 
doms of the world may be gained by obeisance to the Spirit 
of Evil. This is the familiar temptation of a Faustus, im- 
mortalized in the great drama of Marlowe, and in the greater 
poem of Goethe. But it is a seduction that has no potency 
for the pious idealist. “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God, and Him only shalt thou serve,” is the reply of Christ. 
The story concludes with the striking saying that after the 
third temptation the devil left Him, and angels came and 
ministered unto Him. 

The reflection is obvious that such a story commends itself 
to the universal preconceptions of what should form the ed- 
ucation of a great spiritual reformer. Buddha also had his 
period of temptation; what great man has not? Human 
thought, always obedient to conventions even when appar- 
ently most original, has arranged an invariable programme 
for poets, prophets, teachers, and men of genius. Men can 
conceive of no supreme virtue except the kind of virtue that 
is won by struggle. What Milton finely calls “unbreathed 
virtue,” that is to say, virtue uncontested, unexercised, un- 
disciplined by temptation, is really no virtue at all. It is 
the negative of vice, but it is not virtue. The deepest 
thought of man about the moral order of the world is that it 
is disciplinary. Hence the hero of whatever order is one 


54 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


who has overcome. Hence also the story of Jesus would be 
incomplete without victory over temptation. And, in the 
nature of things, such temptation must be real, even though 
the vehicle of its interpretation be a tortured fancy. The 
story of Christ’s temptation loses all cogency if we are asked 
to grant that under no possible conditions could He have 
submitted. It then becomes little less than farcical. He is 
seen as entering on a struggle of which the issue is a 
foregone conclusion. A mistaken reverence insisting on this 
view of the temptation really reduces what is in itself of 
deep interest and abiding invigoration to humanity, to an in- 
sincere and foolish fable. But the story, as it is related by 
the Evangelists, gives no hint of such mental reservations. 
It is told as a plain matter of fact, an essential circumstance 
in the spiritual evolution of the Master, with a rational un- 
derstanding of its implications. Temptation can imply 
nothing less than the possibility of fall, and He who is said 
to have been tempted in all points like we are, would have 
missed the truly cardinal point of all such trials, if it is in- 
conceivable that the temptation might have been effectual. 
In other words, the desert might have proved fatal to Christ ; 
but He escaped by His own superiority of soul, emerging 
from the test triply armed for His great work as the ex- 
emplar of men. 

Following instantly as it does on Christ’s contact with 
John, it can hardly be doubted, as I have already tried to 
show, that the sojourn in the desert was one of the results of 
that association. Perhaps it was undertaken at the immedi- 
ate suggestion of John; perhaps it was a concession on the 
part of Jesus to the prevalent ideals of the time. Jesus saw 
in John a truly great man, whose greatness had been bred 
in the school of austerity, and He Himself would fain make 
a trial of asceticism. The trial was not disastrous; it pro- 


INFLUENCE (OP JOHN ON, JESUS © 55 


duced great results, but the chief result was that it enabled 
Jesus to recover, and finally affirm, the true bent of His own 
nature. The man of real genius, in his period of immaturity, 
makes many such experiments before he comes to a genuine 
knowledge of himself. He is frequently deflected from his 
course by influences which he does not perceive to be foreign 
and eyen antagonistic, and by such adventures of the spirit 
wisdom comes. ‘Thus, after many fluctuations of ideal, he 
finds a permanent foothold of truth, and is the gainer rather 
than the loser by his experiment, because he has won a wider 
knowledge of the human heart. 

It is in this light that the sojourn in the desert should be 
read, so far as it forms a part of the development of Jesus. 
It is significant that His intimacy with John appears to have 
terminated with the temptation. He did not return to John, 
nor does He seek further instruction from him; the Pupil 
had already surpassed His master. His friendship, His 
reverence, His sense of obligation to John remained, but the 
desert marked the parting of the ways. John’s scheme of 
life had many virtues, but it was incapable of general imita- 
tion. It was an abnormal life, and the real redemption of 
men must be wrought through the normal, not the abnormal. 
The conception of the prophet as invincibly austere, notwith- 
standing the general tradition and acceptance, was radically 
wrong. Asceticism, in so far as it imposed a general rule of 
life, was both injurious and insulting to human nature. The 
true bent of Christ’s nature once more asserted itself, and 
the pressure of John’s example ceased to be effective. To 
tread the dusty pathways of the commonplace in a lotty 
spirit of duty; to seek comradeship with ordinary men and 
women; to be free, familiar, kind, in social intercourse ; to 
accept life as in itself good and capable of being better ; to 
live as a man with men—this was to help the world after a 


56 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


fashion much superior to John’s. Jesus had been right after 
all in those simple and profoundly human conceptions of 
life, on which thirty years of lowly toil at Nazareth had set 
their seal. John came fasting; it was the distinguishing 
feature of his austerity; Jesus and His disciples came eat- 
ing and drinking. John preached amid the deserts of 
Judea; Jesus henceforth turns His steps to the pleasant 
shores of Galilee. John is a recluse; Jesus is the Friend 
and Brother, easily accessible, eminently sociable. The 
break in practice is henceforth complete and irreparable. 
Asceticism had been tried and found wanting; it has never 
since been revived save to the injury of religion and the 
degradation of society. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE OPENING SCENES 


THe Lake of Galilee, toward which Jesus directed His 
steps after His sojourn in the Judean desert, was already 
familiar to Him, and it is probable that He entertained for it 
the kind of love which the dalesman has for his own remote 
and sheltered valley. It is a sheet of exquisitely blue, clear 
water, about thirteen miles in length with a maximum breadth 
of six miles. Josephus describes the whole district as a 
terrestrial paradise, laying stress upon the tempered delicacy 
of its air, the fertility of its soil, and the natural attractions 
of its beauty. The modern traveler may flatter himself that 
his eye rests upon the same outlines of scenery that Christ 
beheld and loved; but little else remains. The thick foliage 
that clothed its shores has disappeared as utterly as have 
the gilded pinnaces of Herod or the glittering pleasure barges 
of the Romans which once floated on its waters. Something 
of the grandeur that was Rome, and the splendor that was 
Greece may still be conjectured in the ruins in the Forum 
Romanum or the Acropolis; but not a single clue remains to 
the former prosperity and charm of the shores of Galilee. 

It was with excellent judgment that Jesus chose this dis- 
trict for the scene of His mission. The Galileans themselves 
were of a cheerful temper, and were relatively free from the 
arid casuistries of the various sects which struggled for pre- 
eminence in Jerusalem. They were a simple folk much en- 


gaged in fishing, and in other humble outdoor employments. 
57 


58 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


A certain leaven of cosmopolitanism had also been imparted 
to the common life by the Roman occupation. The great 
road from Jerusalem to Damascus which passed along the 
shores of the lake, brought a constant influx of travelers of 
every nationality. The Galilean fisherman, by the nature of 
his business, found himself brought into contact with many 
types of men, and especially with the Romans, of whose lux- 
urious appetites he was the servant. Many publicans dwelt 
in the district, for the work of collecting the taxes in a dis- 
trict so crowded was heavy. These men are not to be con- 
founded with the Roman farmers of taxes, who were usually 
patricians. They were humble clerks and collectors of cus- 
toms chosen from the local population. The reason why they 
were held in scornful disesteem, or even hated, was a patri- 
otic reason. They were accounted traitors; quite unjustly, 
for if taxes had to be collected, even a patriotic Jew might 
have reasoned that it was less insulting to the nation that the 
taxgatherer should be his own countryman than an alien and 
a pagan. This was a degree of reasonableness, however, 
quite beyond the average Jew, who accounted all money 
raised by taxation, even when taxation was most moderate 
and just, stolen money, and punished the Jewish customs of- 
ficer accordingly by a bitter ostracism which even went so 
far as to deny him the right of making a will. The frank 
and public friendship which Christ extended to these pariahs 
of a bigoted patriotism must have been very grateful to 
their hurt pride; it healed them of their self-despisings. 
No doubt the attitude which Christ adopted toward them 
was largely dictated by a sense of the injustice of their 
position. 

It is interesting to remember that in this busy and popu- 
lous district Jesus would find Himself at all points in con- 
tact with the paganism of Rome. Wherever the Roman went 


THE OPENING SCENES 59 


he carried with him the entire apparatus of his faith and 
civilization. Streets of tombs, such as lined the Appian way 
or the approaches to Pompeii, marked the towns and cities 
where the Roman power was most centralized ; votive tem- 
ples, and statues to Pan and to the gods, sprang up among 
these groves of Galilee; and upon these symbols of an alien 
faith the eyes of Christ must have often rested. No indica- 
tion is afforded us by any word of Christ’s that these monu- 
ments of art and pagan piety made the least impression on 
Him. On the other hand, it is clear that His relations with 
the Romans themselves were friendly. It was in Capernaum, 
one of the most lovely towns of Galilee, that Jesus met the 
Roman centurion, of whom He said that his faith surpassed 
any faith that He had met among the children of Israel. In 
all ages a certain simplicity of character has distinguished 
the soldier. Doubt and incertitude, which are the maladies 
of the man of thought, rarely afflict the man of action. We 
have already seen that the ministry of John the Baptist 
proved attractive to the Roman soldiers. ‘To the teaching of 
Christ they were even more accessible. ‘The Roman was too 
thorough a man of the world to be a bigoted believer even in 
his own forms of faith. He regarded all faiths with toler- 
ance, and was ready to treat them with respect so long as 
they presented no menace to the civil power. The more 
thoughtful Roman went further than this; sceptical of much 
in his own religion, he was an inquirer after truth, full of 
ardent curiosity, and disposed to interest In any new religion 
that challenged him in the lands he conquered. Thus we 
find that the centurion of Capernaum whom Christ praised 
had built a synagogue for the Jews, and among the Romans 
there were many men distinguished by the same fine toler- 
ance and religious spirit. 

In this district, beautiful, fertile, populous, the most cos- 


60 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


mopolitan of all the districts of Palestine, and therefore the 
best fitted for the growth of a new religion, the real ministry 
of Christ commenced. Its towns, utterly razed to the ground 
as they are to-day, were to become more famous in the gen- 
eral memory of man than the greatest cities of antiquity. 
Bethsaida, Capernaum, Magdala, have been the sources of an 
influence more invigorating, and greatly more vital than the 
influence of even Rome or Athens themselves. The words 
spoken in these narrow streets and beside the blue waters of 
this humble lake have reverberated to the utmost lhmits of 
the world. In Jerusalem Christ always felt Himself a for- 
eigner; but here He was at home. The intellectual atmos- 
phere of Jerusalem, arid as the hills on which the city stood, 
dulled the spontaneity and freshness of His thought; but 
here He spoke always with the accent of joyous inspiration. 
Among these simple Galileans He found the friends dearest 
to His heart, and the converts who did most for His memory. 
Peter and Andrew his brother were fishermen of the lake. 
Zebedee, another fisherman, received Him gladly; his two 
sons, James and John, became apostles, and his wife, Salome, 
was with Jesus at Calvary. Matthew was a customs officer 
of Capernaum ; Nathanael belonged to Cana, and Philip to 
Bethsaida. From Magdala came Mary, who regarded Him 
with an adoring passion, followed Him to the cross, and was 
first in the Garden on the morning of the resurrection. 
Never in the history of the world did a single district pro- 
duce so many men and women who were to become immor- 
tal in the annals of faith, piety, love, and genius. Here 
is the truly sacred soil of Christianity; it is to Galilee 
rather than Jerusalem that the pilgrim feet of men should 
travel. 

Before Jesus definitely chose Galilee for the theatre of His 
exertions several things of moment happened. Although we 


THE OPENING SCENES 61 


have no record to guide us, we can hardly suppose that Jesus 
left John abruptly, with no word of affectionate farewell. 
John would perhaps greet Him on His return from the wild- 
erness, and in the calm elation of His aspect, in the radiant 
sense of power that now clothed Him, would anew recognize 
Him as the Lamb of God. In the early dawn beside the 
fords of Jordan they parted, to meet no more. Interested 
followers Jesus had already; He was now to choose dis- 
ciples. Moving northward, through the Jordan valley, He 
comes to the Lake of Galilee, and there beholds two fisher- 
men, Simon Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into 
the sea. These two fishermen had already seen Jesus in the 
congregation of John the Baptist, and had heard John’s 
declarations regarding Him. It would appear they had not 
made up their minds about Him; they were divided between 
growing interest and incredulity. But now, ata simple word, 
their divided thoughts rushed into unanimity; no sooner had 
Jesus said, “ Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” 
than, “they immediately left their ship and their father, and 
followed Him.” ‘The effect which Christ was able to produce 
by a single word or a glance was magical. Matthew, the 
customs officer at Capernaum, the nature of whose occupa- 
tion would forbid any preliminary knowledge of Jesus at a 
place so remote as Bethabara, was hereafter to surrender in- 
stantly to the same call. James and John, the sons of 
Zebedee, appear to have received their call at the same time 
as Peter and Andrew. On this journey northward another 
disciple joined the growing company—Philip of Bethsaida. 
If Jesus had desired some definite assurance that the sense 
of vocation which had possessed His mind in the desert was 
not delusive, no more overpowering proof could have been 
given Him than this new-found power over men. In one 
swift glance He seems to have read the inmost characters of 


62 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the man He chose, and in but one instance did the result 
falsify the hope. He allowed them no time to argue, nor 
did they manifest the least desire of argument. It was as 
though a spell had fallen on them, too potent, too sweet and 
gracious also, for resistance. Throughout His ministry, as 
we shall see, Jesus relied mych on this singular power of 
His over the human will. It served Him as the most potent 
of all weapons in dealing with cases of hysteria and mental 
affliction. The force of His personality gave His lightest 
word an impact which seems entirely incommensurate with 
its ordinary insignificance. When He called He commanded ; 
it was as though a flash of magnetism pierced to the core of 
men’s hearts and fused their desires with His own. So com- 
mon was this effect that He grew to expect instant obedience, 
such as these first disciples manifested; and when a man 
once pleaded that he must needs bury his dead before he 
could follow Christ, the startling reply was that it was his 
duty to follow instantly, and leave the dead to bury their 
dead. 

In one place, however, and among one population, this 
power signally failed. It was natural that before entering 
on His new career Jesus should return to Nazareth, where 
He had been brought up. There were perhaps family affairs 
to be settled, and some preparations made for a prolonged 
absence. St. Luke gives a detailed and animated account of 
this last visit to Nazareth. With what feelings His own 
family received Him we may judge by certain after events of 
His history, which reveal their open hostility. If a prophet 
has no honor in his own country, it is still more certain that 
he is likely to encounter much incredulity in his own family. 
The kinsfolk of a man of genius are usually the last to under- 
stand him. Nor are the acquaintances of his youth and the 
witnesses of his early life in a much better position. Famil- 


THE OPENING SCENES 63 


iarity dulls the force of insight. A scene of nature which 
appeals powerfully to a traveler as the loveliest of its kind 
has often little charm for those who behold it habitually. It 
needs a Wordsworth, coming fresh upon the scene, to see the 
delicate beauty of the humblest flower that blows ; to a Peter 
Bell the primrose by the river’s brink is a primrose, and 
nothing more. It is no doubt discreditable to human nature 
that these infirmities of judgment should exist; but they are 
so common as to form a law almost invariable. This law 
was now to receive a truly tragic illustration in Nazareth. 
The democratic custom of the Jewish synagogue permitted 
any one of reputable character to read a passage from the 
roll of the prophets, and expound it according to his lights. 
There was nothing analogous to what we understand as the 
sober order of public worship. The ordinary assembly in 
the synagogue was rather in the nature of a debating society. 
Questions were asked, difficulties expounded, and criticism 
invited. The dialectic subtlety of the Jewish mind thrived 
in such an atmosphere. It is fair also to remember that the 
same democratic spirit which gave the right of speech to any 
person capable of using it also permitted considerable lati- 
tude to the speaker. Jesus was soon to be adjudged a 
heretic, yet throughout His ministry He was permitted to 
teach in the temples of the national faith. A more extreme 
case is that of Saul of Tarsus, who, in spite of the bitter 
hostility with which he was regarded as a renegade, was al- 
lowed to preach Christ in the synagogue. It is worth notice, 
also, that in the memorable visit of the Boy Jesus to the 
Temple at Jerusalem, no one took exception to His extreme 
youth when He both asked and answered questions, or 
counted Him presumptuous. Stubborn as the Jew was on 
many points of traditional orthodoxy, yet he loved the spirit 
of: debate; and while these public debates often degenerated 


64 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


into something like the asking of casuistic conundrums, they 
did much to sharpen thought and develop a high degree of 
dialectic efficiency in all classes of the community. 

Jesus had often availed Himself of these opportunities to 
speak in the synagogue at Nazareth. St. Luke tells us 
specifically that it was His custom to go into the synagogue 
on the Sabbath day and stand up to read. Some local repu- 
tation He must have already achieved, for it is impossible 
that He should have often taken part in these religious dis- 
cussions without uttering many wise and memorable words. 
That reputation was now much enhanced by His recent as- 
sociation with John, and by the rumor of certain wonderful 
works that He had wrought in Capernaum. What these 
works were, what were His associations with Capernaum, 
can only be conjectured; but it would seem that He had 
already found friends in this town which He always loved, 
and it is likely that He had attempted certain works of heal- 
ing there which had been magnified by rumor into miracles. 
There was therefore every disposition to hear Him with 
respect and attention, not wholly unmixed, however, with 
latent incredulity and far from affectionate curiosity. His 
opening words on this memorable Sabbath morning gained 
Him instant attention. He read one of the great passages 
from the prophecies of Isaiah which had always been con- 
sidered of Messianic significance. His thrilling accent, His 
air of exaltation, the power of charm which had already 
proved so remarkable in attracting disciples, had an extra- 
ordinary effect on the Nazarene assembly. The wave of 
magnetism passed through them, subduing and enkindling 
them. They did not resent His solemn affirmation that, 
“This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.” For the 
moment pure wonder filled their thoughts; an occult and 
powerful spell held them breathless. It was one of those 


THE OPENING SCENES 65 


triumphant moments in the life of Jesus when the force of 
His personality bore down all opposition. 

The spell was soon broken. A note of sarcasm, justified 
doubtless by many a slight and indignity that Nazareth had 
put upon Him, introduced a discord into the music of His 
speech which these Nazarenes had at first found so gracious. 
He perceived their incredulity not only as latent but invincible. 
With that same kind of piercing insight which in later days 
foresaw the certainty of violent death when the immediate 
prospect seemed more brilliant, He discerns that these Naz- 
arenes will never give Him credit as a real prophet. He 
accepts the irony of the situation as inevitable; no prophet 
can be accepted in his own country. It would seem that 
some local jealousy or soreness existed between Nazareth and 
Capernaum. Perhaps the Nazarene, whose interests were 
narrow, held in scorn the wider freedom of the semi-pagan- 
ized Capernaum. Many instances may be found in rural 
districts of the incredible lengths of acrimony, and even fury, 
to which local jealousy may lead. Such a community, filled 
with such a spirit, while neglecting its own prophet, would 
be easily incensed at his popularity in a rival city. Jesus 
makes no effort to conciliate this embittered pettiness of 
feeling. He directly challenges it by defending His prefer- 
ence of Capernaum. He reminds them that the greatest 
prophets did not confine their ministry even to their own 
nation. There were many lepers in Israel in the time of 
Elijah, yet to none was Elijah sent, save unto Naaman, who 
was a Syrian and an outlander. If He found Capernaum a 
more congenial soil for His work than Nazareth, if He chose 
a semi-paganized Capernaum to a strictly Jewish Nazareth, 
He was but doing what Elijah had done before Him. It re- 
quired great boldness to make such a declaration ; it was the 


speech of a reformer whose first, deliberate, and consistent 
3) 


66 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


effort was to break down Jewish narrowness of thought. For 
that reason the declaration could not be made too plainly or 
too early ; it was to the new movement what the theses of 
Luther, nailed to the church door of Wittenburg, were to the 
incipient Reformation. 

The effect was an instantaneous explosion of the most 
violent feeling. The historical parallel between Himself and 
Elijah was naturally disregarded ; angry men care for neither 
logic nor history. Qriental fanaticism, one of the most fero- 
cious forces in the world when once unbridled, suddenly 
changed these Nazarenes into a bloodthirsty mob. The very 
men who but an instant earlier had wondered at His gracious 
words were now intent upon His death. They essayed to 
drive Him out of the city with curses, and even attempted to 
thrust Him headlong from the sharp cliff on which the city 
stood. Jesus escaped them, not by any miraculous act, but 
by that unapproachable power of personality, which still 
affected them like a spell. He passed through the midst of 
them, subduing them as wild beasts are subdued by a super- 
ior will, and went upon His way to Capernaum. Nazareth 
saw Him no more; henceforth Capernaum is spoken of as 
“His own city.” Here He found His true kinsfolk, “the 
blameless family of God.” Henceforth His name is linked 
no more with Nazareth; He is Jesus of Galilee. 

One other incident, as exquisite in feeling as this Nazar- 
ene incident is distasteful and distressing, marked the open- 
ing ministry of Christ. Not far from Nazareth, and on the 
way to Capernaum, lies the little town of Cana. The family 
of Jesus had friends, and probably kinsfolk, in Cana. “On 
the third day”—a phrase to which we can attach little 
chronological significance—says St. John, “there was a mar- 
riage feast in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was 
there: and both Jesus was called, and His disciples, to the 


THE OPENING SCENES 67 


marriage.” It will be observed that no mention is made of 
Joseph; it is probable that he was dead. It is also clear 
that John writes as an eye-witness, though with his usual 
modesty he suppresses his own name, perhaps lest he should 
give offence to his fellow-disciples. The charge of arrogance 
and desire of precedence brought against the sons of Zebedee 
at a subsequent period of Christ’s ministry was remembered 
by St. John even in old age; and hence the curiously round- 
about manner in which he speaks of himself sometimes as 
the “other disciple,” or the suppression of his own name as 
an eye-witness of events, as in this case, when the narrative 
would have been strengthened by a method of testimony 
more direct. 

The presence of Jesus at this purely festive gathering so 
soon after His public appearance as a prophet is in itself 
significant. It is another evidence of His complete sever- 
ance from the school of John the Baptist, and His renuncia- 
tion of all faith in ascetic modes of life. The presence of 
His mother at the wedding, and the part she played in its 
events, also disposes of some natural doubts as to the kind 
of relations that existed between them. Some incertitude 
concerning His claims and His destiny she must often have 
felt, and perhaps still felt. The violent expulsion from 
Nazareth came upon her as a great shock. But with the 
beautiful instinct of a loving and gracious woman she lived 
much with the memories most sacred to her. Amid all the 
bitterness of household dissension she had traditions that 
were pondered in her heart, which were the sacred food of 
faith. She had learned to suppress herself, and to live in 
the life of her Son, as only mothers can. More and more 
since the death of Joseph she had lived in and for her Son ; 
and it was with tremulous anxiety for His safety, with per- 
haps some illuminating hope that Cana might in some way 


68 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


atone for the rejection of Nazareth, that she set out with 
Him across the hills to the wedding of her kinsfolk. 

Once more a picture of indescribable charm, definite and 
joyous, as though touched with the spirit of Greek art, 
assails the eye. In the late afternoon, as the first softness 
of approaching sunset falls upon the hills and the far-off 
snows of Hermon, the little party starts for Cana. Mary 
alone rides upon a mule; beside her walks her Son; and 
between them the silent intercourse of many a kindly glance 
and hand-touch is exchanged. At a few paces from them 
follow the newly called disciples, shy with a latent sense of 
intrusion, talking in whispers among themselves, thrilled to 
the heart when Jesus turns at intervals to look on them, 
conscious that this calm evening marks the first stage upon 
the long road of strange destinies. The twilight is falling as 
they enter Cana. Soft notes of fiute and drum already stir 
the air, and in the fragrant gloom torches are lit one by one. 
Along the narrow street appears a slow procession of Jewish 
virgins, each with lighted lamp—a picture Christ reproduced 
long afterward in one of His most striking parables. At 
last the bride advances, garlanded with flowers, veiled from 
head to foot, moving with timid and reluctant feet from the 
home of maidenhood where she will dwell no more. The 
bridegroom, attended by a crowd of joyous youths, meets 
her; the simple music swells into triumph; the street 
quivers with a hundred lights; and then the wedding party 
passes in to the feast, and the door is shut. It is a wedding 
of poor people, and the feast has not proceeded far before 
the signs of penury assert themselves. The wine is ex- 
hausted, and the cheerful hospitality is menaced with dis- 
grace. Mary, who knows something of the things that have 
happened in Capernaum, turns anxiously to her Son. She 
knows His kindliness of nature too well to suppose Him 


PREV OPENING SGENES 69 


indifferent to the mortification of His hosts. She whispers 
to the servants, “ Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it.” In 
the vestibule of the house stand six earthen waterpots, cov- 
ered with fresh leaves, and filled with water. Jesus signs to 
the servants to fill the empty wine-vessels from these water- 
jars, and they, wondering much, obey. And behold, by 
some strange alchemy, the water is turned to wine, and the 
ruler of the feast, suspecting no miracle, compliments the 
bridegroom on his thrift in keeping the best wine unto the 
last. 

We may be sure that from that moment neither bride nor 
bridegroom were the central figures of the feast; all eyes 
were fixed on Jesus. Throughout His ministry it was 
the same; into whatever company He entered, He became 
the observed of all observers, and was accounted first and 
greatest. In the early dawn the feast ended, and the guests 
separated. What thoughts were theirs, as they passed in 
little groups up the familar hill-paths to their homes! 
How would they stop from time to time; discuss and argue 
anew the strange happenings of the night; suggest proba- 
bilities and explanations that led to nothing, all the while 
quivering with a joyous fear, half glad and half reluctant to 
be released from the spell of a personality so supreme, more 
than half convinced that this was indeed the long-desired 
Messiah. They would circulate the strange story far and 
wide. By nightfall the whole countryside reverberated with 
the rumor. Curious pilgrims poured into Cana, eager to see 
One of whom such marvelous things were told. But soon 
after dawn Jesus had departed too, traveling northward to 
Capernaum, and taking with Him the nucleus of His king- 
dom, His mother and His disciples, who had seen His glory 
for the first time in Cana, and henceforth followed Him to 
death—and beyond death. 


CHAPTER Y- 
THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 


Av this point in the narrative we may wisely pause to in- 
quire what was the programme of Jesus? Every human 
creature, who is not a mere puppet moved automatically at 
the will of fashion and custom, usually forms some more or 
less definite plan of life. The difference between men is not 
so much a difference of power as of definite aim. Where the 
ordinary man drifts hither and thither at the call of cireum- 
stances, takes the first chance path, counting one path as good 
as another, and acquires a superficial veneer of ideas bor- 
rowed from many sources, the superior man marks out a 
course for himself, discriminates in all matters of truth and 
duty, and makes his life the just expression of himself. Did 
Jesus thus define His course? We can hardly doubt it. 
The exclamation of the young Boy in the Temple, “ Wist ye 
not that I must be about my Father’s business?” reveals an 
early sense of vocation; the last saying of Christ to Pontius 
Pilate defines that vocation: “'T'o this end was I born, and 
for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear wit- 
ness unto the truth.” 

Between these two declarations there lies a wide tract of 
life and experience. ach reveals, however, the same atti- 
tude of mind. Hach expresses the temper of the idealist. 
For all the ills of humanity, all the subjugations and tyran- 
nies under which man groaned, Jesus had one sovereign 


remedy: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
70 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 71 


you free.” All vital emancipations begin in the soul. The 
soul that is assured of truth has already soared into an em- 
pyrean, beyond the storms of this troublesome life, and 
equally beyond its vain dreams, its empty perturbations, its 
unquiet desires, and its inordinate affections. Broadly 
speaking, Jesus came to teach men the truth about God, 
about themselves, and about their final destiny. He in- 
cluded all these great themes in one comprehensive phrase, 
“The Kingdom of God or of Heaven.” Men were to seek 
the Kingdom of God first because nothing else really mat- 
tered. The quest of truth was the first duty of man, and the 
attainment of truth his loftiest achievement. No definition 
of spiritual idealism could be more complete, and the work 
to which Christ now addressed Himself was to impart the 
spirit of His own Divine idealism to the world. 

This idealism soon proved itself to be the most powerful 
of solvents when applied to the current life and thought of 
the time. Thus, for example, the moment it was applied to 
the current notions of Messiahship, they disappeared. The 
last thing which the ordinary Jew expected of his Messiah 
was a fresh revelation of truth; what he did expect was po- 
litical emancipation. Jesus perceived at once the grossness 
and incompetence of this conception. It was not political » 
but spiritual salvation which the Jew needed. The restora- 
tion of the throne of David in Jerusalem was a triviality 
compared with the emergence of the nation into a higher 
realm of truth and piety. Patriotism, in the usual limited 
significance of the word, had no place among the virtues 
which Jesus taught, nor did He account it a virtue. When 
He was directly challenged on the burning grievance of the 
tribute-money exacted by the Romans, he gave a witty and 
evasive reply. But the spirit of the reply is clear: He con- 
sidered the question not worth discussion. No word or 


72 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


phrase of His can be cited which can be construed as a pro- 
test against the Roman occupation of Judea. It did not 
concern Him; neither did it anger Him. On the contrary 
He manifested grave displeasure with His own disciples 
when He found that they still clung to the conception of a 
political Messiahship, and expected Him to fulfil it. His 
mission, as He repeatedly assured them, but in vain, was to 
emancipate the souls of men. No one was more indifferent 
to polities, no one less of a patriot. This temper was bound 
to provoke anger and hostility. It was the temper of the 
sublime idealist who lives at a height from which all the 
mere surface conditions of human life are reduced to insig- 
nificance. It was unintelligible to His own disciples; it was 
doubly unintelligible and deeply offensive to a nation so full 
of patriotic passion as the Jew. But from the moment that 
Jesus left Cana of Galilee to take up His life-work, He never 
wavered in these convictions. Political Messiahship was 
impossible to Him. 

We shall see hereafter that some of the bitterest contro- 
versies of Christ’s life centred round the question of Messi- 
ahship. It must be remembered that the whole nation, di- 
vided as it was into a number of opposing factions, was prac- 
tically unanimous in its conception of a Messiah as a political 
redeemer. <A statesman would have recognized in Jewish 
patriotism, expressed in this Messianic hope, the noblest 
quality of a proud and subjugated people. A politician 
would certainly have sought to manipulate it for the nation’s 
liberation: a demagogue for his own advantage. A very cur- 
sory glance at history is sufficient to assure us that patriot- 
ism has been one of the most potent and invigorating forces 
at work in society, begetting many heroic virtues, and per- 
petually stimulating nations on the path of progress. Surely, 
then, it was an act of fatal temerity in Christ to disregard it. 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 73 


But He disregarded it, not because He scorned it, but because 
it was incommensurate with the scale of His ideas. He al- 
ready saw mankind as one race, one family ; and He dreamed 
of a sublime confederation in which all nations should be 
one. 

Such an idea might have been explained with some chance 
of success to the Greek, or to the more philosophic class of 
Roman, but it had no chance whatever with the Jew. In one 
respect it would have appealed strongly to the Roman, and 
in after days did appeal successfully. For the Roman ideal 
was the ideal of unity. The boundless ambition of Rome 
drew a sketch of the whole world as one empire, obeying 
common laws, moving to the rhythm of a common life, fitted 
like the manifold parts of a mosaic into one superb design 
of ordered peace. And Rome was wise enough also to per- 
ceive the advantage of religious unity. A simple and catholic 
religion, embracing all nations, was part of her imperial 
dream. Was Jesus debtor to the Roman for some of His 
ideas which may be described as truly imperial? Did what 
He saw of Roman power and life in this semi-paganized 
province of Galilee help to broaden His thoughts into a cath- 
olic conception of humanity, entirely foreign to the common 
Jewish mind? It is by no means unlikely: but it is at least 
certain that from the very commencement of His ministry He 
had ceased to speak as a Jew. His rejection of the idea of 
political Messiahship was merely part of an extraordinary 
emancipation of mind, which excluded the sense of nationality 
itself. He comes with a concordat which is for all peoples. 
He proclaims something far more august than the redemp- 
tion of the Jew—the redemption of the world. In a word, 
He recognizes that His true Messianic mission is to establish 
the religion of humanity. 

With a religion of humanity for the main article of His 


74 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


programme, it soon became evident that the relations of Jesus 
to official Judaism could not be friendly. It is almost im- 
possible to state in language that does not appear exaggerated 
the miserable condition of Judaism in the days of Christ. 
Three great parties contended for pre-eminence: the Priests, 
the Pharisees, and the Sadducees. The priests had already 
ceased to lead or rule the national life. The high-priest, or 
supreme pontiff, was the merest puppet in the hands of the 
Romans. The work of the priests themselves was almost en- 
tirely ritual and formal, and they lived in or near the Temple 
at Jerusalem. The reverence for the Temple—a reverence 
perhaps as much patriotic as religious—remained ; but the 
multiplication of synagogues, each with its own set of dis- 
putants, had greatly undermined its influence. The Pharisee 
was in part a zealot, in part a pedant. ‘The Sadducee was a 
kind of “moderate”; rich, cynical, epicurean, distrustful of 
enthusiasm, agnostic, and proud of his agnosticism. Sama- 
ria, again, had a religious system of its own, which was 
treated with unsparing contempt by all the other great relig- 
ious parties. Many sects existed, all at strife among them- 
selves. The broad and plain outlines of Mosaic morality 
were overlaid with a mass of foolish and contemptible ped- 
antry. Dry-rot had eaten into the whole structure of Juda- 
ism. It still retained the aspect of imposing strength, but 
all its parts were desiccated. It was ready to fall at the first . 
vigorous blow; but its renewal was impossible. 

We have already noted that the Jewish mind is above all 
things subtle, and its strongest passion is a passion for dia- 
lectic. From dialectic fervor to pedantic casuistry is an easy 
process of degradation. ‘To the casuist everything is dis- 
putable. Nothing is seen in plain outlines; the most defi- 
nite truth or duty is capable of being refined away until noth- 
ing of its original and essential substance remains. This is 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 75 


precisely what had happened in relation to the Mosaic law. 
Some of the disputes of the religious sects with Christ, which 
aroused the keenest animosity, appear to us of an almost ab- 
surd triviality. They frequently centred round the proper 
observance of the Sabbath-day. On one occasion Jesus and 
the disciples were severely blamed for plucking the corn as 
they passed through the cornfields on the Sabbath-day. Tal- 
mudic law recognized five different species of sin in this act: 
To remove the husks was sifting the corn; to rub the heads 
of corn was threshing; to clean away the side-adherences 
was sifting out the fruit; to bruise the corn was grinding ; 
to hold it up in the hands was winnowing. All these acts 
were forbidden ; therefore a fivefold damnation rested on him 
who plucked and ate the corn on the Sabbath-day! Yet, by 
another quibble, it was permitted to a man to remove a whole 
sheaf from the field, if he had previously laid upon it a spoon 
in common use; for it was not sinful to remove the spoon, 
and the sheaf might be removed with the spoon, the sheaf 
being treated as part of the spoon for the time being! 

This is sufficiently ridiculous, but it is worse than ridicu- 
ious, since the Sabbath law manifestly encouraged every form 
of insincerity and hypocrisy. The man who wished to evade 
the law which fixed two thousand cubits from his dwelling as 
a “Sabbath-day’s” journey, had only to deposit food at the 
boundary assigned, and the place where the food was depos- 
ited might be considered as his dwelling. He was then free 
to travel another two thousand cubits if he wished. Sixty- 
four folio pages of the Talmud in use in Jerusalem were re- 
quired to state all the possible cases of exigency and excuse 
in the keeping of the Sabbath, and they are stated with such 
ingenuity and pompous solemnity that one might suppose 
that they involved the entire sum of human destiny. One 
can only imagine that the pious authors of this document 


76 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


were completely destitute of a sense of humor. But their 
destitution of humor was the least of their offences; they 
were destitute of the spirit of humanity. They could argue 
interminably as to how an ass should be saddled so as not 
to offend against Sabbath law; they could spend years, as 
one Rabbi was reputed to have done, over a single chapter of 
these sixty-four folio columns, in order to discover or remedy 
defects ; but for such acts of mercy as healing the sick, or 
even washing a wound, they. made no allowance whatever. 
What was Jesus to make of a system calling itself relig- 
ious, which was so vitiated with trivialities, pedantries, and 
insincerities as this? In truth He could make nothing of it. 
It was, as I have said, incapable of reform. ‘To the truly 
fine elements in the Mosaic economy Jesus never showed 
Himself indifferent. He repeatedly declared that He came 
not to destroy the law of Moses but to fulfil it. Morality in 
every age has but one language. Christ spoke that language 
in accents which Moses would have recognized, but it was 
beyond hope that these degenerate sons of Moses should 
recognize it. He applied to them the striking saying of 
Isaiah that seeing they did not perceive, hearing they did 
not hear, and did not understand. Very early in His min- 
istry He was driven to this denunciation. He who was so 
hopeful of human nature in general, so quick to perceive its 
great qualities, so indulgent to its weaknesses, had no hope 
of traditional Judaism. He recognized it as a soil intracta- 
ble to even His husbandry. It resisted Him from the first, 
and it would always resist. There is a point in the decay 
of religious systems beyond which renovation becomes im- 
possible. Mere decay may be cut away; but as in some 
soils and natures, apparently plastic, there runs a stratum 
which turns the edge of the finest weapon, so deep strata of 
stubbornness and obstinacy ran through the pedantic pietism 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 77 


of the Jew, which turned the edge of all reform. When this 
happens the only real reformer is the iconoclast. Such sys- 
tems must be wholly broken up, and the old must be thor- 
oughly razed to the ground before the new can rise. Jesus 
knew that He came as an iconoclast, and this iconoclasm was 
an essential part of the programme with which He confronted 
the Jewish world. 

The spirit in which Jesus interpreted this iconoclastic part 
of His programme is worthy of attentive study. It is most 
easily recognized in His total aversion from many forms and 
ceremonies to which the Jew attached great importance. 
Thus, upon one occasion, He and His followers were accused 
of not washing their hands before meat. To the act itself 
Christ could have had no objection, for it was part of that 
admirable system of hygiene which ruled all Jewish life. 
But it was also part of a religious system which attached 
wrong values to things. In all external matters the Jew was 
a bigoted formalist. Christ described this formalism as a 
mere washing of the cup and platter, and, in yet more strik- 
ing language, as a care for external cleanliness when the 
heart was full of all uncleanness. Hence in so small a mat- 
ter as the ritual washing of hands before a meal He deemed 
protest necessary. MRitualism of all kinds He abhorred. 
He speaks in scorn of the phylacteries of the Pharisees. 
He deliberately compares the humble attitude of a publican 
in the Temple with the self-righteous attitude of a Pharisee 
who has fulfilled every obligation of the law. He perceives 
that one of the most deadly effects of ritualism is to put ex- 
ternal rectitude in the place of internal piety and virtue. 
The men who are most careful over the tithe of mint, and 
anise, and cummin, omit altogether “the weightier matters 
of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” They “strain at a 
enat and swallow a camel.” They fall into the common 


78 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


error of all extreme ritualists, they exaggerate the value of 
trifles, they forget essentials, they see the duties of life and 
piety in a false perspective. Yet, in spite of all that is ped- 
dling and contemptible in the popular observance of the 
Mosaic law, Christ never loses sight of the real dignity of 
that law. He praises it, and conforms to it. He tells those 
whom He has healed to offer such gifts in the Temple as are 
prescribed by the law of Moses. His last public act is to 
eat the Passover with His disciples at Jerusalem, though He 
well knew that He risked His life and theirs by being pres- 
ent in Jerusalem at such a time. Thus if Jesus may be 
called an iconoclast, and a determined opponent of tradi- 
tional Judaism, never was there an iconoclasm tempered by 
so fine a tolerance or directed by so broad a spirit of piety 
and sympathy. 

In His aversion from the pedantries and formalism of 
Judaism, it is natural that His attention should have been 
specially directed to the poor. Although the acute dispari- 
ties between poverty and wealth were not felt in the way in 
which they are felt in modern civilization, yet they existed, 
and they were accentuated by the spirit of contempt with 
which the ruling classes regarded the mass of the people. 
The superiority claimed by wealth is capable of great in- 
solence and cruelty; but when there is added to this the 
superiority of religious pride, the effects are still more dis- 
astrous. Both these forces were active, and malignantly 
active, in the social life of Christ’s day. The lips of the 
Pharisee were never free from terms of contempt for those 
who were not as himself. All country-born people were de- 
rided as ignorant. Whole provinces were stigmatized by a 
blighting epithet. Samaria was a “city of fools”; no good 
thing could come out of Nazareth; Galilee was ridiculed as 
having no unleayened bread in it, that is, its entire popula- 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 79 


tion was tainted with the yeast of foreign admixture. The 
poor also suffered from many unjust exactions made in the 
name of religion. The priests at Jerusalem grew wealthy by 
these exactions. Yet the Jewish Psalms were full of the 
praises of poverty; Hillel, one of the greatest of recent 
teachers, had taught the blessedness of a humble state; and 
a great party, called the Ebionite, existed, whose peculiar 
tenet was the divine privilege of poverty. To this party 
Christ was attracted both by His sympathies and His ex- 
perience. He had lived a poor man’s life, He knew the kind 
of virtues which it fostered, and He knew how painful was 
the contempt that it endured. The poor needed a champion, 
and He esteemed such championship a duty and a privilege. 
Thus He claims as one of the original features of His min- 
istry that the poor have the Gospel preached to them, and it 
is a theme of joyous congratulation with the Evangelists that 
the common people heard Him gladly. 

Yet here again the fine tolerance of Christ’s mind should 
be noticed. He was not an Ebionite any more than He was 
an ascetic. He knew that His kingdom would naturally ap- 
peal more powerfully to the poor than to the rich, and would 
be largely composed of them; but He never defined in such 
a way as to exclude the wealthy. He offers no objection to 
the inequalities of society as such. He utters no sweeping 
condemnations of wealth as in itself evil. He treats the pos- 
session of wealth not as a crime but as atrust. He points 
out with equal truth and justice that the peril of riches is 
their “ deceitfulness.” They deceive men into a sense of the 
complete sufficingness of the present life. The sin of Dives 
is not that he is wealthy, not even that he fared sumptuously 
every day, but that he forgot the obligations of wealth, 
epitomized in the beggar at his gate. The sin of the rich 
man who added barn to barn was not the wealth which was 


80 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


in a real sense a tribute to his energy of character, and the 
fruit of his industry, but that he forgot his own soul. So 
far was Christ from scorning the wealthy and holding aloot 
from them, that He always treated them with courtesy, 
shared their hospitality, and felt no inconsistency in being 
their guest. Those who resent the contempt that is meas- 
ured out to poverty often retort with a corresponding con- 
tempt of wealth. But Christ held contempt of human nature 
in any form as wrong. .A champion of the poor He could 
be, but a revolutionary demagogue He could not be. The 
truth about His attitude to social inequalities is perhaps best 
expressed by saying that they only interested Him by their 
moral effects. It was not the temporary condition of human 
existence that interested Him most deeply; it was human 
nature itself. 

The natural sequence of such a temper of thought as this 
is a new religion of humanity. Starting with the principle 
that men court spiritual phenomena, and that the only reform 
worth caring for was a reform of the spirit, the conclusion 
was a religion of humanity which treated all men as equal. 
They were equal not in their powers of mind or body, still 
less in their social conditions, but they were equal in their 
capacity for spiritual hfe. They were children of a common 
Father and heirs of a common destiny. This is the real 
keynote of all Christ’s thought. This is the real explanation 
of His friendly attitude to the Samaritan whom the Jew de- 
spised, and the Roman whom he hated. Men and women 
of whatever nationality, of whatever order of life, found 
themselves no longer treated with that contempt which lies 
at the root of all social evils. They discovered in Jesus a 
teacher who treated them as equally worthy of regard and 
friendship, for He had in a sense rediscovered the genuine 
worth of human nature. Pity, sympathy, and love met 


THE DIVINE PROGRAMME 81 


them, instead of ostracism and misunderstanding. He who 
called Himself the Son of Man was the friend of all men. 
The new religion was to prove the one absolute religion, 
because it was the one truly catholic religion. Henceforth 
all passing distinctions of class and race were obliterated m 


one immortal conception, “God is your Father, and all ye 
are brethren.” 


CHAPTER VI 
IDYLLIC DAYS 


THE return of Jesus from Cana to Capernaum was prob- 
ably a kind of triumph. Young, gracious, fascinating, He 
had by a single act endeared Himself to a multitude of bam- 
ble people. The rapid growth of His popularity is easily 
explicable when we recollect the crowded condition of Galilee, 
and the extraordinary swiftness with which rumor travels 
among Oriental peoples in times of excitement. Residents 
in India have often told us marvelous stories of how the 
telegraph itself has been outstripped by the speed of popular 
rumor. ‘Things which the authorities have treated as pro- 
foundly secret are openly discussed in bazaars and market- 
places a thousand miles away. ‘The whisper of the states- 
man’s closet vibrates through an empire. It would seem 
that a kind of freemasonry, the methods of which are never 
known to persons in authority, exists among these subtle- 
witted and silent populations of the Hast, and by its means 
news is disseminated as by the birds of the air. 

Galilee resembled a province of Judea in its crowded life, 
and the presence of the conquering Romans drove the people 
to a thousand means of underground communication. Within 
a very narrow tract of country were found more than two’ 
hundred towns and villages, with an average population of 
about fifteen thousand. The whisper of what had happened 
in Cana travelled fast. rom lip to lip, in synagogues and 
bazaars; among the fishing boats upon the lake, and far 

82 


TONE IaT Ca ID Agy S 83 


away in the fish-market at Jerusalem; in the caravans that 
filled the main roads, and among the distant hamlets of the 
hills, there spread the thrilling news that the Messiah had ap- 
peared. Already from the fords of Jordan there had drifted 
back to these towns and cities the disciples of John, each of 
whom had reported to excited throngs what John had said 
of Jesus. Peter and Andrew, James and John, each had his 
tale to tell. The marvelous escape of Jesus from the furious 
crowd at Nazareth was bruited far and wide, and now there 
came the story of the wedding in Cana, with all its glowing 
charm of kindness and of miracle. The first touch of Jesus 
on the strings of life had evoked the chord of a boundless 
love and admiration. He was already a popular hero. 

Idyllic days followed. Jt was perhaps now that, for the 
first time, He began to teach in the open air. The local 
synagogues could not contain the throngs of those who 
sought to see and hear Him. Sometimes He sat upon a hill- 
side and discoursed to these eager throngs, who forgot all 
sense of time while He spoke. At other times a friendly 
fisherman lent Him his boat, and from it He would address 
a great multitude that stood upon the shores of the lake. In 
the bright spring weather, when all nature was fermenting 
with new life, His own mind expanded with a similar joy of 
erowth. He uttered exquisite truths with the ease and 
felicity of a poet who is assured of the boundless resources 
of his own genius. He scattered gems of thought with a 
prodigal profusion. Admiration melted into adoration. The 
multitude followed Him from place to place, with the grow- 
ing sense that here was One whom it would be good to 
follow to the world’s end. 

Tt was a kind of Renaissance of Judaism which He inau- 
eurated by the waters of this sacred lake. The formalities 
which had all but killed Judaism were stripped away like 


84 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


choking parasitic growths from a fair flower, and the flower 
shot up in unsuspected splendor. Men whispered to one 
another as He spoke that He taught with authority and not 
as the scribes. Yet in reality He taught at this time nothing 
that was absolutely new. All the precious beatitudes of His 
most formal utterance—the Sermon on the Mount—are but 
reaffirmations of truths familiar to all readers of the Hebrew 
scriptures. They are gems of Hebrew thought and morality 
new-set. But to these thrilled and enthusiastic crowds it 
was as though the cold gem throbbed with fire, and became 
a living thing. It was not merely new-set; it was re-created. 
The commonplaces of morality became original discoveries 
of truth as He uttered them. They sounded simple and 
familiar; He made men feel that they were also profound 
and new. Just as every flower beside the lake was in reality 
a new creation, though it obeyed a type on which centuries 
had set their seal, so Christ called forth from these seeds of 
old morality truths which seemed to have sprung up there 
and then for the first time. 

A juster illustration of this process may perhaps be found 
in what we understand as the primary colors of art, or the 
primary notes of music. The primary colors are few: great 
artists like Titian or Gainsborough used but six or seven. 
The common notes of music are few: so few that a famous 
philosopher once lamented the approaching extinction of 
music as a growing art, because in time all possible musical 
combinations would be exhausted. But experience teaches 
us that the artist cannot exhaust the possible combinations 
of color, nor the musician the possible combinations of mu- 
sical notation. In the degree that an artist or musician is a 
man of original genius, he makes the art he produces an 
original thing. In the same way Christ availed Himself 
freely of all the materials of Hebrew morality. Absolute 





THE HOLY FAMILY 
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HOW CO ID AY 85 


originality is impossible to man. The man who is egoistic 
enough to suppose that he can attain 1t soon discovers that 
he treads a road worn by the footprints of millions, and the 
truth he supposed new is no sooner uttered than it is re- 
echoed back to him from a hundred generations that have 
been before him. ‘The only true originality consists in see- 
ing things with a fresk eye, passing them through the alem- 
bic of an individual experience, and reporting them with 
undeviating lucidity and precision. This was what Jesus 
did in all His teaching. All the old colors of Hebrew teach- 
ing were in His thought but the result was new. All the 
old notes of Hebrew philosophy were sounded by Him, but 
the music He drew from them had a loftier method and a 
larger rhythm. The forms of things were familiar, but the 
form was penetrated and illuminated by His own powerful 
and gracious personality. 

He adapted His teachings with inevitable skill to the minds 
of His hearers. He treated conduct not as three-fourths of 
life, but the whole of life. The distinction between thought 
and conduct is both mischievous and misleading. Thoughts 
and emotions are but actions in embryo. What we do is but 
the ripened seed of what we are. Jesus, at this period, and 
for a long time to come, treated conduct as the one thing 
worth talking about. He spake to men and women of the 
common cares and anxieties which compose so large a part 
of life. He blamed them for the folly of laborious prepara- 
tion for a day that might never come. He counselled them 
to reconcile themselves: to the element of the inevitable, the 
law of limitations, which is found in every life. Bounds were 
set for them which they could not overpass; all the thinking 
in the world could not add a cubit to their stature. As He 
sat beside the lake and saw the hills gay with purple lilies, 
and the birds busy in their innocent and frugal life, Nature 


86 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


herself adorned His discourse with illustrations. The flow- 
ers grew, the birds were fed; life and food were all that men 
could rightfully demand from God, and these things God de- 
nied to none. The real wants of men were few, the artificial 
many. Human misery sprang from the dissatisfactions of an 
artificial method of life. Blessedness lay not in the gratifica- 
tion of desires, but in their moderation. Poverty, thus con- 
sidered, was not a state of degradation but of beatitude. ‘The 
chief auditors of these diseourses were poor and work-worn 
people. Jesus made them feel the real dignity of life, and 
few services which it is in the power of the wise to render to 
the humble is comparable with this. 

In a moment of happy inspiration Jesus invented an en- 
tirely new form of discourse, possible only to a mind essen- 
tially poetic. He began to teach the people in parables, and 
the method was so successful that it is said that henceforth 
He taught them in no other way. He told them stories, so 
apt, so skilfully contrived, so suggestive, that once heard 
they were never forgotten. Those who have seen the Oriental 
story-teller in some Eastern market-place will have remarked 
upon the extraordinary spell which he appears to exercise. 
He begins at dawn, he ends at eve, and there is no moment 
of the long day when there is not a multitude gathered at his 
feet. Time and occupation are equally forgotten in the fas- 
cination of his narrative; the whole scene is a living com- 
ment on the saying of Moses, that “we spend our days as 
a tale that is told.” Ripples of laughter run through the 
audience, glances of admiration are exchanged, and at times: 
the power of tragedy hushes the crowd into breathless si- 
lence. So Jesus spoke to these rapt throngs beside the Lake 
of Galilee. His mind expressed itself most freely and more 
perfectly in these imaginative forms. He was capable of 
translating the humblest incident of common life into a poem, 


LDV LTACS DAYS 87 


often into a tragedy. He used at will every weapon of the 
story-teller—irony, sarcasm, humor, pathos, an extraordinary 
erace of narrative, and an unequalled power of dramatic in- 
vention. After the sterile platitudes, and the still more ster- 
ile disputes and casuistries of the synagogue how great the 
change! The people were as children discovering for the 
first time the wonder of life. They thrilled, they wept, they 
wondered, moved this way and that at the will of the speaker. 
They were ready even to follow Him by thousands into a 
wilderness, and to forego food for the sake of a delight so 
novel and so exquisite. 

A note of unfailing cheerfulness, a note of joyous emanci- 
pation characterized these discourses. He spoke as one who 
had no cares and knew not what they meant. He thus be- 
came, as it were, the incarnation of the spirit of joy, the 
symbol of the bliss of life. Most thoughtful men who live 
under highly civilized conditions of society have moments of 
depression and disgust, when they ask whether the price they 
pay for civilization is not too great. The man who gives his 
life to the strenuous programme of personal ambition is 
rarely satisfied with the result. He is afflicted with a dismal 
suspicion that whatever may be his success he has made but 
a poor bargain. In the end he is apt to exclaim, “What 
shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!” Whole 
races and literatures are from time to time afflicted with this 
kind of world-weary pessimism. When the malady reaches 
its height some one is sure to appear with the old and sure 
remedy of a return to nature. Jesus came with this remedy. 
He insisted on the simplification of life as the means of 
available happiness. Men had ransacked the earth for the 
secret of happiness and had forgotten to water the flower of 
felicity that grew at their own doors. A case in point was 
the Roman patrician, who had sought “all these things ”"— 


88 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


fine raiment, luxurious food, gorgeous habitations, power and 
fame, and yet was not happy. On the contrary Christ re- 
vealed Himself as having nothing yet having all things, as 
poor yet rich, as humble in condition yet absolutely happy. 
He defended happiness as the natural right of man. If man 
was unhappy it was because he had misconstrued the terms 
of his life. Christ’s own sweet and gracious gaiety of heart 
proved contagious. The crowds who gathered round Him 
were joyous crowds. At-His word the world had become 
young again; care and grief were forgotten; it was a multi- 
tude of happy children that sat beside the lake, emancipated 
from themselves, and from all the “burden of this unintelli- 
gible world.” When the Pharisees, who approved the sterner 
rule of John, complained of this Galilean joyousness, Jesus 
answered with a striking saying, suggested possibly by the 
recent marriage feast at Cana, the story of which was fresh 
in every memory. “And Jesus said unto them, Can the 
children of the bride-chamber mourn as long as the bride- 
eroom is with them? But the days will come when the 
bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall 
they fast.” 

Perhaps no aspect of Christ’s mind and teaching has been 
so generally neglected as this cheerful joyousness, this en- 
thusiastic unworldliness and delight in poverty. As a rule 
it has been neglected because it has been found inconvenient 
to remember it. The Roman, who represents all that we de- 
scribe as civilization, has only too successfully contested the 
ground with the Galilean, who represents idyllic and para- 
disal life. The civilized man almost invariably makes a fetish 
of civilization. He cannot be persuaded that lack of social 
ambition is anything but folly. Nor can he understand that 
a return to nature means anything but social anarchy. In 
spite of many grave misgivings as to the wisdom of the cou- 


USN Gb) NOR IDV ees 89 


ventional plan of life, the average man cannot be persuaded 
to alter it. Hence the real beauty of this Galilean idyll is 
never visible to him: or, at least, it is never perceived as af- 
fording a practicable plan of life. There can be no doubt, 
however, that Jesus did regard this early Galilean Gospel as 
containing the only truly wise and practicable plan of life. 
A considerable allowance must, of course, be made for the 
conditions of time, place, and circumstance, under which it 
was enunciated. In a climate such as Galilee possessed it 
was no real hardship to be poor; nor was a frugal mode of 
life difficult, in a condition of society where luxury was rare. 
But these qualifications do little to alter the essential fact, 
which is that the simpler life is in its mode and scheme, the 
likelier is it to be happy. The troublesome cares of food 
and raiment, social custom and position, eat deeply into a 
man’s heart, consume his time and energy, and destroy his 
capacity for the natural and enduring forms of happiness. 
Few persons will seriously dispute that in the lives of such 
peasants and dalesmen as Wordsworth commemorates, or in 
Wordsworth’s own life, there were found a larger number of 
exquisite moments of joy, together with more solid and suf- 
ficing pleasure, than can be discovered in the most successful 
life of the anxious merchant or the scheming politician. 
This may be taken as Christ’s doctrine of the simplification 
of life interpreted in modern synonyms. The whole subject 
is admirably stated in a verse of Russell Lowell’s :— 


‘‘For a cap and bell our lives we pay, 

Bubbles we earn with a whole life’s tasking ; 
’Tis only God that is given away, 

"Tis only Heaven may be had for the asking. 


> 


The true tragedy of life is not poverty; it is the mis- 
directed effort of men, who avoid poverty indeed, but discover 


90 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


later on that they have spent their strength for nought, and 
toiled for that which is not bread. 

Jesus did not seek to do more than impart elementary 
truth to these Galilean crowds. Nor can it be said that He 
was anything but tolerant and wide-minded in the rule of 
life which He enunciated to them. His text day by day 
was the same: First things first—“Seek ye first the King- 
dom of God and His righteousness.” He did not say, 
“First things only”—that is the language of the monk and 
the fanatic. His definition of right conduct allowed ample 
scope for the various fulfilments of human taste and capac- 
ity. The merchant may be a merchant still, the artist an 
artist, but he must first of all be a Christian. Every form 
of culture may adorn the life of man, but spiritual culture 
comes first. His tolerance was extended even to the lives of 
publicans and soldiers. There is no recorded instance of 
His having condemned the lives of these men; He saw in 
their pursuits, hateful as they were to the Jew, nothing irrec- 
oncilable with a true reception of His doctrine. He was 
content if He enabled them to see the nature of human life 
in its true perspective. When once self ceased to be the 
pivot of life all other reformations of habit would follow. 
Egoism is the real curse of man. When a man is freed from 
egoism he takes his place once more as a contented unit in 
the Divine order of the universe. All his thoughts that were 
once turned inward, to his own self-torture, are now turned 
outward, and he begins to feel the joy of existence. His 
life then moves in real rhythm with the life of the universe. 
Many men have taught these things, but the power of Jesus 
was that He exemplified them. Men looked into His eyes 
and knew the doctrine true. He had found the secret of 
happiness which all the nations of the world had missed. 
It was the attractive power of this happiness that drew these 


LOVEE DAYS 91 


thousands day by day to the lake shore or the mountain- 
side. He offered them the wine of life, the new wine of the 
Kingdom of God, and they could not drink deep enough of 
a draught so divinely inebriating. Day followed day in a 
sort of miraculous bridal feast; for was not the Bridegroom 
with them ? 

One searches history in vain to discover anything quite 
like the idyll of these Galilean days. The nearest counter- 
part is the career of Francis of Assisi. The power of Francis 
lay in a certain exquisite charm of joyousness and goodness. 
His happiness was so complete that men instinctively turned 
to look after him as he passed, as though a strain of heavenly 
music vibrated on the air. He was poet and a nature-lover, 
calling himself by the delightful title of the “troubadour of 
God.” The sight of flowers and woods and nesting birds, 
and all the sunny firmament of the Umbrian spring, intoxi- 
cated him with ecstasy, and made all his words lyric. The 
simplicity, sweetness, and purity of the man overcame all 
prejudice against his doctrines. Great Churchmen like 
Cardinal Ugolino and St. Dominic, full of the pride of 
learning and of power, became as little children in his pres- 
ence, and thrilled and wept. A hush of something more 
than admiration—of affection, reverence, tenderness—finds 
its way into the voices of all who have spoken of him. The 
accounts of his preaching vividly suggest many scenes that 
happened by the Galilean lake. Men describe these utter- 
ances as rather kindly conversations than orations, de- 
livered with such an accent of sincerity and tenderness that 
enemies were reconciled, social pride was forgotten, multi- 
tudes wept they knew not why, and sought to kiss the hem 
of his robe as he passed through them. Even the model of 
his face taken instantly after death affects us with the same 
sensations. The brow, so pure and peaceful, the mouth and 


92 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


eyes so wistfully affectionate, call for love and inspire it. 
After seven centuries, the roads he trod, the places he fre- 
quented, seem still haunted by his presence, and it is with a 
softened and a glowing heart the traveler follows in his 
footsteps. With such a story, still fresh and real, and in all 
its main outlines undoubtedly authentic, it is not difficult to 
understand the scenes in these little Eastern towns when 
Jesus drew nigh to them. If Umbria is yet sacred to the 
reverent heart for the sake of Francis, how much more sacred 
these silent shores of Galilee, where Jesus moved in all the 
first charm of His joyous grace, drawing all men after Him. 

The first utterance of a great poet often has a flute-like 
freshness of note never quite recaptured. It was so with 
Jesus. His mind was to move upon an ever-widening orbit, 
His teachings were to unfold profounder truths than any 
uttered to these earliest disciples; but the idyll of these 
Galilean days remains for ever inapproachable in charm. 
He never spoke again in quite the same accent of untroubled 
joy. He never found elsewhere an audience so immediately 
responsive to His touch. Controversies, becoming more and 
more embittered as His ministry increased in influence, 
awaited Him, and we shall see hereafter with what relief He 
returned again and again to Galilee. Probably His first so- 
journ in Galilee was very brief, although it may have been 
quite long enough for the utterance of His most characteristic 
teachings upon conduct. St. John tells us that after return- 
ing from Cana to Capernaum, He abode there not many 
days; but the term “day” is one of somewhat vague signif- 
icance in Gospel history. It seems at least likely that He 
remained long enough to commence those wonderful dis- 
courses by the lake, for immediately afterwards we find Him 
in Jerusalem, exercising a kind of authority which could 
only have been based on previous popularity. We have 


FOYER TCD AVS 93 


now therefore to follow Him to Jerusalem, and to witness a 
scene not less remarkable than these scenes beside the lake, 
but of a quite different significance. The first fresh note of 
joy is lost for a time in the discord of controversy, and 
already there is heard the premonitory note of tragedy. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 


WHILE Jesus was engaged in these teachings beside the 
lake, the signs of preparation for the greatest of all Jewish 
festivals had begun to appear throughout the towns and vil- 
lages of Galilee. The Passover commemorated a great de- 
liverance; and we have already seen that it was universally 
believed that the golden age of the national life, which was 
yet to come, would be inaugurated by a still greater deliver- 
ance. The Passover had thus become more than a festival 
of religion, it was a national and patriotic celebration. It 
bore another aspect too; it was an imposing demonstration 
of the national unity. A common pulse of thought and emo- 
tion beat through the whole land, gathering intensity as the 
sacred day drew nearer. For a month before the feast there 
stood in every market-place of town or village the booth of 
the money-changer, to whom the poor people took their 
mixed coins, that they might exchange them into the stand- 
ard shekels, which alone were accepted as legitimate money 
by the Temple authorities. Preparations for the journey it- 
self, more or less elaborate according to the social condition 
of the pilgrims, had to be made. This general stir of life 
might very well have proved distracting to the congregations 
Christ had gathered on the hillside and beside the lake. 
Their thoughts had begun to wander from His exquisite dis- 
courses to the long rehearsed and anticipated episodes of 
the coming journey: the meeting with kinsfolk and friends, 

94 


DHE CLEANSING OF THEOTEMPLE: °95 


the exchange of news and greetings, the exclamations of de- 
light when caravan after caravan swept down from different 
valleys, and joined the excited crowd upon the main road, 
the new-kindled sense of the force of nationality which was 
fostered by this gathering of the scattered units of a nation 
into a common focus of sentiment and hope. Jesus perhaps 
recognized the impossibility of continuing His addresses to 
these ardent Galileans in such a period of general excite- 
ment. Moreover, the Passover was sacred to Him as to 
them, though for other and more spiritual reasons. He ap- 
pears to have abruptly concluded His public ministry in 
order that He might travel with these comrades of His 
thought to the Passover celebration at Jerusalem. 

Many memories would occupy His mind as He traversed 
this familiar road. Nearly eighteen years before He had 
traveled by the same road, a wandering Boy, looking for the 
first time upon the larger things of human life. His mother 
was with Him then; no doubt she was with Him now; but 
besides her there was this joyous company of Galilean 
friends who were to become the nucleus of His Church. He 
had seen the mystic opening of the scroll of destiny. He 
had learned at Nazareth that His work was not to be achieved 
without violent hostility and opposition. What would Jeru- 
salem say to Him? Such a question could not be considered 
without grave and serious thought. The lessons He had 
learned from John, and subsequently verified for Himself, of 
the incurable corruption of the priesthood returned to Him 
now. He saw at the roadside many sepulchres, newly 
whitened, in order to protect the pilgrims from pollution ; 
they were to Him sad parables of the priests and Pharisees 
themselves, who whitened the outside life by ritual ordi- 
nances, while within they were full of dead men’s bones and 
all uncleanness. And He saw also that this great festival, 


96 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


so full of sweet and solemn associations, was turned into a 
gigantic engine of oppression by the rapacity of the rulers. 
Ever thoughtful for the poor, Christ had abundant occasion 
on this pilgrimage to remark how they suffered by the sys- 
tem of legalized extortion which prevailed; and thus, amid 
the general rejoicing, He rode sadly meditative of the means 
by which they might be vindicated and delivered. 

We may pause a moment to examine what this rapacity of 
the priesthood really meant in relation to the Passover cele- 
brations. In the first place the Temple-tribute of a Galilean 
shekel—about one shilling and twopence of our money—was 
levied on all Jews, with the exception of minors, slaves, and 
proselytes. The law was strict; he who did not pay the tax 
was liable to a distraint upon his goods. The only excep- 
tion made was in the case of priests, who escaped the levy 
by a wholly mean and contemptible quibble founded upon an 
obscure passage of Leviticus. 

It is obvious that in a country crowded with foreigners the 
pure standard coin demanded by the Temple authorities was 
not easily obtained. The poor Jew, residing in some small 
village, rarely handled any but debased coinage, or coinage 
which the priests declared debased. Consequently the 
money-changer reaped a rich harvest. On every half-shekel 
rendered he levied a charge of about twopence, so that for 
the pure Galilean shekel the pilgrim paid fourpence as a rate 
of exchange. This amounted in the aggregate to between 10 
and 12 per cent. The wealth thus accumulated by the 
money-lenders was large; the wealth of the priests much 
larger. Some idea of this wealth may be formed when we 
recollect that the annual revenue from these sources is com- 
puted at £75,000, and that the Romans took from the Temple 
treasury, in the final spoliation of the city, no less than two 
and a half millions sterling of money. How far the priests 


THE CLEANSING OF THESTEMPLE: «9% 


themselves conducted this usurious business is not clear. It 
is certain, however, that the priestly house of Annas openly 
conducted bazaars, and used the Temple itself as a centre of 
merchandise. Yet Palestine was then, as it is now, a poor 
country. Any one who has seen a company of pilgrims go- 
ing to Mecca, and has ascertained anything of their personal 
condition, will know that they are often poor to a degree 
beyond penury, and that their pilgrimage represents the hard 
self-denial of a lifetime. The average Jewish Passover pil- 
grim was not perhaps so poor as these, but in the majority 
of instances he had no little difficulty in meeting the ex- 
penses of this annual journey to Jerusalem. Yet it was from 
exactions levied on these poor people that the priests grew 
rich, and became insolent to and contemptuous of the poor, 
in the degree of their wealth. 

These exactions did not stop at money-levies. The Temple 
system of sacrifice and purification imposed further demands 
upon the pious. ‘The Sadducees, who were mainly priests, 
or of priestly descent, maintained that all beasts required for 
sacrifice should be obtained directly from the priest; the 
Pharisees, in this controversy for once upon the side of the 
people, maintained that all animals for sacrifice or offering 
should be bought in the open market, at the current market 
price. ‘This controversy grew in time into a bitter trade dis- 
pute. Each side made strenuous attempts to “corner the 
market,” as we should put it. An instance is preserved of a 
pair of pigeons being run up to no less a figure than fifteen 
shillings, and before night being brought down to fourpence. 
But all efforts to defeat the Sadducees collapsed. It was of 
the first importance that any offering brought to the Temple 
should be free from blemish, and the priest and his assistant 
were the only persons qualified to decide on such a question. 
It is obvious that such power was open to gross abuse. A 

7 


98 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


poor countryman was very likely to find that the animal he 
had bought in the open market was rejected by the Temple 
inspector. Rather than incur this peril and disgrace he went 
to the market of the priests, and bought a certified animal at 
a much higher than the market rate. ‘Thus it came to pass 
that, partly for convenience, partly as a valuable impetus to 
trade, cattle markets came to be held in the outer courts of 
the Temple itself. These markets appear to have been the 
property of the High Priests. It is clear, then, that a system 
of rapacity, not less odious and unblushing than the Roman 
sale of indulgences, which provoked the Reformation, existed 
in the Jewish Temple itself, and the main effect of this sys- 
tem was not only the desecration of the Temple, but the op- 
pression of the poor, who were the main sufferers and the 
victims. 

In these long caravans moving to Jerusalem there must 
have been many a pilgrim who trembled at the thought of 
the ordeal he had to face at the hands of these covetous and 
degraded tradesmen of the Temple—for such the greatest 
priesthood in history had virtually become. ‘The talk among 
the poorer groups of pilgrims turned much on these matters. 
They discussed with anxious voices how affairs would go 
with them, and the natural joyousness of a great religious 
festival was overclouded by misgiving and foreboding. Few 
things are more pathetic to a man of fine feeling than the 
anxious economies of the poor; nothing is more odious than 
the advantage which is constantly taken of the inexperience 
of the poor by the unscrupulous avarice of trade. These 
poor Galileans would not hesitate to confide the difficulties 
of their position to one of whose sympathy they were sure, 
and from whose popularity they hoped some bold and effica- 
cious scheme of reform. He heard them with a grieved and 
indignant heart. It is noticeable that throughout His min- 


THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 99 


istry nothing so quickly excited Him to anger as the wrongs 
of the poor. All the pity and gentleness of His nature is 
transfused into scathing flame when He defends the poor. 
No wonder, then, that His heart swelled more and more with 
indignation as He drew near the Holy City, until at last in 
the bitterness of His thought He was ready to describe the 
most sacred of all shrines, and most august of all religious 
edifices then upon the earth, as nothing better than a den of 
thieves. 

The last encampment of these Galilean pilgrims on the 
road to Jerusalem would be in the neighborhood of Bethel. 
To the Jew no spot was more sacred. Here Jacob had 
dreamed that dream which had implanted in his mind the 
germ of Jewish nationality, and in his soul the diviner germ 
of a truly spiritual religion. On this starry April evening 
did Jesus also stand in the midnight silence, under the same 
unchanging heavens, awed and thrilled with the sense of a 
God not afar off, but “closer than breathing, and nearer than 
hands and feet!” A few days later we shall find Him pass- 
ing this way again, to meet at the well of Sychar a casual 
listener to whom He gives the sublimest definition of religion 
which the world had ever heard: “God is a Spirit, and they 
that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 
It may have been that on this very night of solitary reverie 
at Bethel this great axiom first formulated itself in His mind. 
Standing rapt and silent, His hair wet with the dews of 
night, far from the sleeping camp, He experienced one of 
those intense hours of self-communion out of which new 
ideals, truths, and resolves are born. All that He had heard 
and seen of the operation of Jewish religion in this memora- 
ble journey returned upon Him now. He saw not merely its 
degradation but its emptiness. He saw with new and start- 
ling distinctness that He had no more a part or lot in it. 


100 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Any attempt to impart new vitality to these worn-out forms 
of truth would fail; it would be pouring new wine into old 
wine-skins, joining new cloth to old raiment. It was a night 
of the parting of the ways. ‘Through the infinite night si- 
lence His soul soared into a loftier dream than Jacob’s. 
Bethel had once more become the very house of God, and 
the gate of heaven; and on its sacred soil that resolve was 
taken which led Him with unerring footsteps to the Cross. 
Early next morning, with the first light, the caravan started 
for its last brief and easy stage. Very soon there came into 
view the magnificent spectacle of Jerusalem—a city set upon 
a hill, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. 
Dominating all that great array of pinnacles and palaces rose 
the Temple itself, one mass of burnished gold, resplendent 
in the sun. But Jesus saw it with preoccupied and brooding 
eyes. That thrill of heart which every Jew felt at the sight, 
which He Himself had known in earlier days, could no more 
be recaptured. He felt afar off the menace of the proud and 
glorious city, and saw in it His predestined battlefield. As 
He and His band of Galileans passed through the crowded 
gates, slowly making their way to the Temple courts, a plan 
of swift and definite action sprang up in His mind. He re- 
solved that with Him the trumpet should give no uncertain 
sound. Men should know the meaning of His mission; 
they should understand from the first that He came not to 
temporize with the old, but to supersede it; not to obey con- 
ditions, but to create them ; not to rehabilitate the past, but 
to make all things new. ‘The idealist, thus armed with cour- 
age, has seldom to look long for his opportunity. Christ's 
opportunity met Him in the first court of the Temple which 
He entered—the outer court where the bazaars of Annas 
stood and the money-changers pushed their trade. The din, 
the confusion, the indignity of the scene can easily be pic- 


EHE CLEANSING OF TRE CPEMPLE 164 


tured by any one who has once looked upon an Oriental 
market. The presence of great herds of sheep and oxen in 
these sacred courts gave them the appearance of a shambles. 
Poor women chaffered anxiously at the stalls where doves 
were sold in wicker cages, and came away elated or depressed 
by the nature of the bargains they had made. Shrill voices 
were raised in dispute, and violent altercations, threatenings, 
and even blows were exchanged. It was pandemonium— 
and it was pandemonium in the Temple. It was a scene 
which no man of reverent mind could describe as other than 
indecent and even infamous; yet so entirely were the priests 
of a great and ancient religion absorbed in the thought of 
the tide of gold which poured from this bazaar into the 
Temple coffers that they did not so much as regard it as in- 
congruous. 

For some moments Jesus stood and looked upon the scene 
in perfect silence. From the open court of the Temple a 
wide view of the city itself lay at His feet; and 


He looked upon the city every side 
_ Far and wide; 
On the bridges, causeways, aqueducts, and then — 
On the men! 


Anger was a rare passion with Jesus. His ministry was pre- 
eminently a ministry of peace; but the ministry that has no 
flame in it is also destitute of vital heat. For Himself—that 
is, for slights or contempt offered to Him, or for neglect of 
kindness toward Him which the barest hospitality demanded 
—He was never angry. He once commented in the house 
of a rich Pharisee on such a want of hospitable courtesy ; no 
water had been provided that He might wash His feet after 
a toilsome journey; but it was more in grief, or in a kind of 
sad and gentle irony, than in anger. Anger with Christ was 


102 WHE MAN ChURDS dj ieis 


always a moral passion. The things that made Him angry 
were irreverence, hypocrisy, cruelty, meanness, and unkind- 
ness. And as He looked on this scene, profane in its irrev- 
erence for sacred things, hypocritical in use of religion as 
the mask of avarice, unkind and cruel in its organized rob- 
bery of the poor, anger swelled His veins—an anger all the 
more awful and intense by its very rarity. Hastily gather- 
ing together certain small cords that lay upon the Temple 
floor, He wove them with practiced hands into a whip or 
scourge such as cattle-drivers use. In a moment, before His 
intention was perceived, He had fallen on the throng of 
money-changers and cattle-merchants, driving them before 
Him like chaff before the wind. In the tumult the tables of 
the money-changers were overturned, and the bellowing cat- 
tle ran madly down the steep street leading to the Xystus 
gate. None dared to oppose Him. Insignificant and almost 
absurd as this whip of small cords was for such a wholesale 
task of purgation, in His hands it had become such a sword 
of flame as burned behind the backs of the first great fugi- 
tives from Eden. It was as though Morality itself had leaped 
full-armed and terrible upon these miserable hucksters and 
traffickers who had long ago forgotten its very name. The 
timid, awe-struck Galileans looked on incredulous of what 
they saw. ‘The officials of the Temple, perhaps Annas him- 
self, hastily summoned, were still more incredulous. The 
anger of the Galilean, like a conflagration, had passed in an 
instant over a host of privileges, carefully nurtured through 
many years of the astutest priest-craft, and they were con- 
sumed. The Temple was empty, and the whole city, moved 
to look upon this new prophet, rang with the name of Jesus. 

The extraordinary feature of this incident is that, full of 
fury as the priests must have been, yet no reprisals were at- 
tempted. But for this inactivity on their part there were 


THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 103 


cogent reasons. One was the already great popularity of 
Christ—for it is obvious that a quite unknown person, with- 
out followers or reputation, would never have been permitted 
to perpetrate such an outrage on custom. Another reason is 
that His act was popular. The only point of view from which 
most men would regard it would be that it was an energetic 
vindication of the popular contention that the trade interests 
which the priests had set up and consolidated were both in 
essence and practice unjust. Besides this there is always a 
lurking sense of satisfaction in a populace at insults offered 
to an oligarchy or aristocracy that has forfeited respect. The 
priests were not wholly unaware of how they stood with the 
people. They knew that in spite of the immense hold which 
the Temple religion had upon the people yet there was no- 
where collected under heaven a population so stubborn, re- 
bellious, and hable to frantic excess when once their passions 
were aroused. In some respects these ancient Jews much 
resembled the Florentines of the Renaissance, who at one 
moment appear as utterly supine under tyranny and the next 
as the most turbulent population of Italy——a people capable 
of being imposed upon by any sort of priestly jugglery, but 
equally capable of hanging an archbishop when once their 
resentment mastered them. Ii the priests hesitated to arrest 
Jesus, it was for a reason that often appears in the subse- 
quent history: it was that they feared a tumult among the 
people. One significant incident, however, reveals the true 
temper of men like Annas and his son-in-law Caiaphas, and 
the priestly conclave in general. They took careful note of 
all the words that Jesus uttered to the people during this 
brief visit to Jerusalem. Spies followed the Galilean every- 
where, and their reports were whispered from one to another 
in the secret sittings of the Sanhedrin. Long afterwards, 
when the hour of vengeance came, it was upon a word uttered 


104 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


in this first visit to Jerusalem that the priests based their 
condemnation of Him. That word which He spoke about 
the Temple—“ Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will 
raise it up again”—the immediate meaning of which was 
that even were the Temple destroyed yet the power of spirit- 
ual worship would remain—was a word carefully treasured 
in minds equally malevolent and acute, and later on it was 
produced against Jesus with deadly effect. Thus it was in 
the Temple, where His first daring act of reform was done, 
that the first shadow of the Cross fell upon Him: and this 
scene casts a strong illumination on the drama of His death. 
When the spirit of the market-place has entered the house 
of God there is no measuring the nature of the disasters 
which may ensue. They may even include utter hostility to 
truth, the persecution of the good, and in the end the murder 
of the just. Events proved that Jesus was crucified, not be- 
cause He declared truth, but because He attacked privilege 
—a crime for which the corrupt know no pardon. 


CHAPTER VIII 
JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 


NOTHING is more remarkable in the career of Jesus than 
the attention, sympathy, and patience which He devoted to 
individual inquirers after truth. Public men who have at- 
tained great eminence are usually inclined to regard their 
work in its collective aspect only. They reserve themselves 
for great and formal utterances, and find it convenient to 
leave the troublesome work of personal interviews to subor- 
dinates. A great teacher is soon surrounded by a zealous 
cordon of attached friends, who have an honest and quite 
laudable desire to spare the master the intrusion of those 
whose curiosity and enthusiasm is their only passport to his 
presence. We repeatedly find the disciples acting in this 
capacity, and Christ as frequently rebuking their friendly 
zeal. It was, however, part of Christ’s programme to en- 
courage friendly personal relations with all kinds of men. A 
casual glance at the Gospels is sufficient to convince us that 
Christ made constant use of this Socratic method of instruc- 
tion, for three-fourths of the wise and exquisite sayings which 
are reported to us by the Evangelists were uttered to indi- 
viduals or to little groups of men and women in familiar con- 
versation. : 

This first Passover visit of Christ to Jerusalem as the 
newly acclaimed Messiah is distinguished by a very remarka- 
ble interview with a leading member of the Pharisaic sect, 
and His journey back to Capernaum by an equally extraor- 
dinary interview with a woman of Samaria. In each case we 

105 


106 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


find Christ disclosing all the treasures of His mind to indi- 
viduals ; for it may be claimed that in no formal address 
which He ever uttered did He touch upon deeper themes than 
in His conversations with these two persons. 

Nicodemus appears to have been a man distinguished by 
much sincerity of mind, combined with conspicuous timidity 
of temper. He was a man of culture, and he had learned 
the intellectual caution and reserve of culture. No one needs 
to be assured that culture invariably breeds the spirit of in- 
tellectual reserve. With the savage every emotion of hope 
or fear finds instant, spontaneous, and complete expression. 
He is but a larger child, easily touched, easily offended, and 
the workings of his mind are as readily discerned as the 
workings of a clock, whose wheels and pulleys are only 
separated from us by a lucid barrier of crystal. But with 
the growth of culture human nature becomes less accessible, 
and greatly more diffident. Books teach the incertitudes of 
knowledge, and observation the deceitfulness of appearances. 
The man of culture hesitates to be too dogmatic in his opin- 
ions lest he should err, and too frank in the expression of 
his feelings lest he should be misconceived. The emotions 
are still potent, and are perhaps deepened in force, but they 
are not so readily touched. In such generalizations as these 
the character of Nicodemus may be discerned. As a Phari- 
see he had every reason to approve the daring exploit of 
Christ in cleansing the Temple. A great reform, which 
many had desired, the Nazarene had achieved; what a 
thousand had thought one man had done by the force of a 
superior will. But the larger question yet remained— Who 
was this Jesus of Nazareth? What was the real nature of 
His claims? Was He a turbulent revolutionist, momentarily 
successful in vindicating popular rights, or was He the very 
Christ ? 


PES UocAN DEE DNDIVID UAT 9) 107 


Full of these questions Nicodemus sought an interview with 
Jesus. We may gather something of the general dubiety of 
mind and the incipient hostility of spirit which prevailed 
among the Pharisees in respect to Christ, from the circum- 
stance that Nicodemus adopted secret methods for his inter- 
view. He came to Jesus by night. A teacher less tolerant 
than Jesus might have resented the method of approach as 
in itself an insult. Jesus, however, receives him with a per- 
fect courtesy. Nicodemus opens the conversation with some 
general complimentary remarks upon the obvious proofs that 
Christ has given of authority and power. Jesus quietly 
ignores these compliments, and replies with the startling 
saying that Nicodemus needs to be born again. What Nico- 
demus had expected in this interview was a prolonged dis- 
cussion on Messiahship. He had come armed with much 
Rabbinical lore, with text and instance, and he proposed to 
take Christ along this well-trodden path, testing Him at 
every point, and ascertaining how He was prepared to solve 
the difficulties which His Messianic claims involved. Jesus 
turns the tables, by making the interview not a testing of 
Himself but of Nicodemus. Nicodemus must be born again ; 
that is to say, he must recover the simplicity of a child’s 
mind and nature, he must discard the barren artificialities 
with which a narrow culture has overlaid a mind naturally 
sincere, he must look upon spiritual phenomena with a fresh 
eye, and a temper of transparent candor. Repentance, which 
was a word ever on the lips of Christ, really means nothing 
more than a change of mind, producing a change of direction 
in the purposes of life, and a corresponding change of con- 
duct. It is this gospel of repentance that Christ preaches 
to the proud ruler in this solemn midnight interview. 

The interview was intensely typical of Christ’s method of 
dealing with individuals. He rarely argued, nor did He 


108 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


encourage argument in others, well knowing that while argu- 
ment often leads to embittered dispute it rarely ends in con- 
viction. He relied rather upon simple and positive state- 
ment, made with great directness. He gave credit to human 
nature for an instant response to truth, when once truth was 
clearly perceived. ‘The form in which He put truth before 
Nicodemus is so essentially colored with the peculiarities of 
John’s phraseology, that we may regard the expression “ Ye 
must be born again” rather as John’s summary of a long 
conversation than a precise report of it. But it is an admir- 
able summary. New birth is not so strange a phrase as it 
first appears, when we recollect that new knowledge com- 
municated to the mind is in effect the new birth of thought, 
and that a great and pure love communicated to the heart is 
equally a new birth of the emotions. Men are constantly 
re-born by the inrush of new truths, hopes, and enthusiasms 
into their hfe. Nicodemus is inclined to regard the doctrine 
as irrational ; in reality it is the highest reason. This Christ 
endeavors to show by linking it with one of the best known 
operations of the physical world. No man can tell how the 
spring regenerates the earth, and yet it 1s regenerated. The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, by its viewless force quicken- 
ing all things into sudden growth. We wake upon a spring 
morning to find a new world at our feet, and so rapid and 
entire is the change, especially in Eastern climates, that it 
breaks on us like a great surprise. If we were to describe 
the most lovely sensation which the spring produces on our 
minds, we should perhaps say that it is as though the world 
had grown young again. Winter, which fills us with a sense 
of the pale decrepitude and age of the world has suddenly 
vanished, and all things are rejuvenated. ‘This is no doubt 
the language of a poet, but Jesus always spoke in this lan- 
guage. Robbed of its perfume and music, and reduced to 


JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 109 


plainest prose, what Christ says to Nicodemus is that the 
heart needs renewing by the breath of God, as the earth is 
renewed by the benignant magic of the spring. He who is 
thus renewed becomes again as a little child, who lives by 
intuitions and impressions rather than by deliberate acts of 
reason. ‘To such a creature a miracle is no longer unintelli- 
sible or repellent, because all life ig interpenetrated with the 
sense of the miraculous. 

In that long midnight interview, if Jesus did not make an 
instant convert, He made a real one. A new bias had been 
imparted to the life of Nicodemus, and his after-life showed 
its far-reaching effects. In this interview he appears as the 
man of reason, honestly eager to arrive at a knowledge of the 
truth. A subsequent scene reveals him as the man of justice. 
Many months later the time came when the incipient hostil- 
ity of the rulers to Christ became open and malignant. Ir- 
ritated beyond bounds by the popularity of the Nazarene, 
they made a determined effort to arrest Him, only to find to 
their chagrin that the very officers of justice were carried 
away by the popular enthusiasm, and not only failed to ar- 
rest Jesus but accounted for their failure by the extraordi- 
nary admission that, “ Never man spake as this man.” From 
one end of Jerusalem to another there rang the thrilling cry, 
«This is the Prophet, this is the Christ!” The Sanhedrin, 
summoned hastily, is driven frantic by reports of things done 
and said in the Temple which transcend all limits of forbear- 
ance. ‘I'hen once more Nicodemus comes to the front. He 
is all for tolerance, cool deliberation, unbiased justice. 
“Doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and knows 
what he has done?” he exclaims. It was an eminently just 
and reasonable inquiry. He sweeps aside as trivial and ab- 
surd the question whether or not any prophet ought to come 
out of Galilee. He is indifferent to the taunt, “Art thou 


110 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


also of Galilee?” He presses the more sensible and prac- 
tical inquiry whether this man is not a true prophet in spite 
of His Galilean origin. He endeavors to modify the force of 
passion, to inculcate sobriety of judgment, to impress the 
need for scrupulous fairness. And in yet one later scene 
Nicodemus appears as the man of feeling. In the final 
drama of Christ’s life he stands pre-eminent among the rulers 
as an open friend and sympathizer. The spectacle at Cal- 
vary, which could wring from a soldier hardened to such 
scenes of suffering, the cry, “This is the Son of God,” was 
the last crystallizing touch which transformed Nicodemus 
from a cautious observer and timid friend into an ardent dis- 
ciple. In that dread hour, when he thought of all the past 
—his wavering trust, his slow emotions, his halting appre- 
ciation of Christ—his heart was filled with a divine tide of 
love and sacred penitence. He could do little then to mani- 
fest his love for Christ, but he did the one thing he could: 
he begged the body of Christ for burial, that he might spare 
it the indignity of a felon’s grave. Such was Christ’s first. 
convert in Jerusalem. If we lose something of historic se- 
quence by thus bringing together in one brief monograph all 
that is known of Nicodemus, we also gain much in the un- 
derstanding of his character, and in the yet more important 
understanding of the influence Christ had upon that charac- 
ter. Although nothing revealed it at the time, Christ had 
every reason to be proud of the first convert granted to Him 
in Jerusalem. Events showed that that midnight interview 
was not wasted; Nicodemus knew what it meant to be born 
again. 

It is probable that Jesus made other friends during this 
brief visit to Jerusalem. He may already have found His 
way to the house at Bethany, where so many of His happi- 
est hours were spent; the intimacy and tenderness of His re- 


Tes Gen De RET Nav OWA Tae «> Tat 


lations with Mary and Martha suggest that these faithful 
women were probably among His earliest admirers. Nor 
would it be an altogether unreasonable flight of imagination 
to suppose that it was under the roof at Bethany that the in- 
terview with Nicodemus took place. The household of Laz- 
arus was well known in Jerusalem, and had friends and pos- 
sibly family connections among the Pharisees. Thus we find 
that later on, when Lazarus lay dead, many Jews came from 
the city to condole with his sisters, and returned instantly to 
the Pharisees to report the great miracle which Jesus had 
wrought. ‘The conjecture gives a vivid touch of local color 
to the picture. On a night wonderful with moonlight we 
may imagine Nicodemus passing out of the Holy City by that 
very road along which Jesus journeyed in humble triumph 
in the last week of His life; skirting the base of that Mount 
of Olives made for ever sacred by His Passion; and so com- 
ing to the quiet village whose very name is perfumed with 
holy memories to countless multitudes of Christians. Was 
it the hand of Mary that unlatched the door for Nicodemus 
that night? Was it she who had arranged the interview? 
And was it she also who reported it in days far remote, when 
John sought eagerly for any reminiscence that should do 
honor to his Master? This woman, of still and meditative 
mind, who loved to sit at Jesus’ feet, oblivious of everything 
but the charm of His conversation, was born to be His chron- 
icler. Martha, cumbered with much serving, had little to 
communicate concerning the ways and words of Jesus; but 
Mary forgot nothing. And if, indeed, this interview took 
place in the house at Bethany, we may be sure that few things 
in her faithful and adoring intimacy with Christ would leave 
so clear an impression on Mary’s mind as this prolonged 
conversation in which Christ first revealed the real scope and 
spirit of His message to the world. 


112 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


That message was, however, to receive a yet more definite 
enunciation toward the close of the month, and again in a 
personal interview. ‘Turning his face northward, Jesus now 
set out in company with many returning pilgrims, for Cana 
and Capernaum. ‘The first day’s journey would take Him to 
Ramallah, the second to Bethel, when He and His disciples - 
detached themselves from the main caravan. From Bethel 
the northward road becomes arduous, difficult, and even dan- 
gerous. After an excessively steep ascent the road follows a 
torrent, which flows between steep and bare hillsides, scan- 
tily clothed with olive-trees. This valley or gorge is the gate 
of one of the most fertile districts in Palestine, the land of 
Ephraim. By this road Jesus traveled, until at last He saw 
the great plain of Shechem, bounded by the upland country 
of Samaria, the distant foldings of the Galilean hills, and 
finally by the snow-clad heights of Hermon. 

Jacob’s well is one of the few undisputed holy sites of 
Palestine. It stands at the roadside, not far from the little 
village of Iskar, which is the ancient Sychar. To this well 
Jesus came, wearied with the heat of the day and the toil- 
some journey. His disciples went away to buy food, and He 
sat upon the coping-stone of the well awaiting their return. 
The rest of the story is told us with admirable simplicity by 
St. John. A woman comes to draw water, and Christ en- 
gages her in conversation. ‘The act, natural and courteous 
as it was, impressed the woman as startlingly unconven- 
tional, for she perceived Him to be a Jew, and it was a tradi- 
tion that the Jew had no dealings with the Samaritan. But 
as the conversation proceeded surprise became wonder, won- 
der melted into fear. The woman appears to have been 
grossly ignorant. She entirely misses the point of Christ's 
remarks about living water. With the literalism of a dull 
mind she proceeds to argue about the superiority of this 


JESUSHAN De Pirro rNIo EVI UAL. 9/173 


particular water, and reluctantly admits that if the water of 
which this stranger speaks be indeed all that He says it is, 
it is worth coyeting. So far the conversation has been one 
of cross purposes. Its character is now utterly changed by 
a single abrupt word on the part of Christ. He tells her to 
fetch her husband, and when she replies that she has no 
husband, proceeds to show Himself acquainted with her 
family history. The singular thing is that, disgraceful as 
this history 1s, yet she is absolutely unconscious of the dis- 
grace. Uneasy rather than humiliated, she tries to change 
the subject by arguing about the relative merits of Jewish 
and Samaritan worship. And then to this woman, dull of 
mind and immoral in life, unable on every ground to appre- 
ciate Him, Jesus utters a saying so profound that it may be 
said to have inaugurated a new religion for the world: 
“God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, must worship 
Him in spirit and in truth.” 

_ How far the woman comprehended the sublime truth of 
this aphorism it is difficult to say. The disciples may be 
excused for considering this an instance of casting pearls be- 
fore swine. But Jesus had no such feeling, and that is per- 
haps the most remarkable feature of the interview. Not only 
does He rise entirely above the pettiness of the Jewish feel- 
ing which had bred an age-long scorn of the Samaritan, but 
He even seems to rise above the faults and limitations of the 
woman, seeing her ideally as a human creature only. Per- 
haps He meant the whole scene to be an object-lesson to His 
disciples of His infinite catholicity of spirit. They could 
hardly have seen their Master spending so much pains over a 
very poor specimen of the human race, without some glimmer- 
ing perception of the real dignity of the humblest unit of the 
race. It was the first of many shocks which their Jewish 
pride and Messianic hopes received at the hands of Jesus. 

8 


114 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


It took them many years to learn the simple truth that noth- 
ing that God has made is common or unclean. Yet that 
truth received magnificent exposition in the very attitude of 
Christ to this woman: and joined with it was the clearest 
possible exposition of a new religion, absolutely free from all 
forms, rising above them, and finding them unnecessary. 
That day beside the well of Sychar Jesus drafted the work- 
ing plan of Christianity. Its main principles were two: the 
conception of humanity as one; the definition of religion as 
spiritual. Upon these two pillars the whole amazing struc- 
ture of the new religion was to rest. 

It will be observed that these two utterances of Christ, 
connected in point of time, display also a common sequence 
of thought. The message to Nicodemus, and the message to 
the woman of Sychar, are substantially one. Christ bids 
this virtuous Pharisee and this dissolute woman meditate 
upon the same truth—the forgotten spirituality of their own 
natures. Nicodemus had forgotten this in the arid casuis- 
tries of Pharisaism, the woman in the coarse animalism of 
her life. But until man remembers that he is a spiritual 
creature, religion is impossible to him. He may be moral 
or immoral, decorous or depraved, but religious he cannot 
be, simply because religion is a perception of the spiritual 
side of things. It is “the romance of the infinite,” not, 
however, aS it exists in the mysteries of space, but in the 
human heart itself. Neither of these persons had realized 
this capacity for the infinite, this “eternity in the heart,” as 
the Hebrew poet finely called it; and although Nicodemus 
would have scorned to speak to this woman, and would have 
been deeply affronted at the thought of being included for a 
moment in the same category with her, yet they are alike in 
this, that each is thoroughly unawakened to the spiritualities 
of life. He, eager to discuss abstruse questions of Messiah- 


JESUSVAND* GH INDIVIDUAL ) 115 


ship, and she, equally eager to discuss the relative values of 
Jewish and Samaritan worship, are really speaking the same 
language. And so for each there is but one message, as 
there still is but one message for man, whatever may be 
the decorum or indignity of his hfe; he must be born 
again into a belief in his own spiritual nature, and know 
himself as a living soul come out from God, and returning 
to God, before the bare conception of religion is possible to 
him. 

But perhaps the most astonishing reflection is that Christ 
should have entrusted profound truths such as these to the 
chances of casual conversation. Surely teachings that are 
among His very greatest utterances deserved a wider audi- 
ence than this; for who can reflect without a shudder upon 
how much of Christian truth would have been irrevocably 
lost if these two great statements had by any chance been 
forgotten? At first sight it does undoubtedly appear that 
the chance of such sayings being lost was very great, and 
that the probability of their faithful recollection would have 
been much increased had they been uttered in some public 
address. But we may ask if this is really so. Are sermons 
and public addresses so accurately recollected as a rule that 
it can be claimed that they afford the securest guarantee for 
the preservation of truth? Who remembers, after many 
years, a single sentence in a sermon, flashed upon the mind 
in the rush of oratory, except as a vague and generally inac- 
curate impression? But a deep and true thing said in inti- 
mate conversation is far better recollected. 'The impression 
made is much deeper, because it is accompanied by a force 
of personality, a flame and efflux of the spirit, more intense 
and intimate than is ever possible in oratory. And so when 
Christ uttered His wisest and profoundest sayings to individ- 
uals or to little groups of people, He was, perhaps, taking the 


116 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


best possible means for their preservation. They sank into 
hearts too deeply moved ever to forget them. New emotions, 
new ideas, and a new life were dated from them. They were 
associated with a thrill of wonder and of joy that vibrated to 
the last hour of life. It is the crowd that forgets, the indi- 
vidual who remembers ; and there is a far securer safeguard 
of remembrance in the emotion of the individual than in the 
general impressions of a multitude. 

Only less astonishing is the graciousness of Christ in 
these interviews. To a man who treats Him almost as a 
conspirator, in seeking Him by stealth, to a woman who is 
notoriously corrupt, Christ gives ungrudgingly the very best 
of Himself. How easy to have put them off with formal 
aphorisms and brief answers! How excusable if Jesus, 
worn out by a day of supreme excitement in Jerusalem, or 
wearied by the long journey to Sychar, had abstained from 
anything like detailed explanation and adequate discussion ! 
Or, if not altogether excusable, how natural had it been, if 
Jesus had reserved Himself, and kept back the great truth 
with which His mind was full for some public and important 
occasion! But Jesus is content if, by the most lavish ex- 
penditure of Himself, He can bring a single soul to the 
knowledge of the truth. And later on, when His Church 
begins its resistless propaganda, His disciples have to con- 
tent themselves with many such obscure victories. The 
value of the meanest unit of society became one of the car- 
dinal axioms of their thought. The redemption of society 
through its units became one of the cardinal principles of 
their action. Fraternity, that feature never found in any 
purely civil society, however enlightened, received a new 
definition at their hands. Onesimus the slave was equally 
“a brother beloved” with his Christian master. Christianity 
thus meant a real triumph of democracy, although it never 


JESUS AND THE INDIVIDUAL 117 


used the term. But if we seek for the source from which 
this democracy was evolved, do we not find it in the 
exquisite grace, entirely free from all condescension, 
with which Christ treated the humblest units of the com- 
munity ? 

The wisdom of Christ was justified in His treatment of 
Nicodemus by his ultimate conversion; if we hear no more 
of the woman of Sychar, we find that Christ’s conversation 
with her led to results that were of importance in the devei- 
opment of this ministry. The incident made a great impres- 
sion upon the neighboring population. The Samaritans be- 
lieved in Him, not, indeed, for a very lofty reason to begin 
with, but for a better reason as they knew Him better; at 
first because of the woman’s description of how Christ had 
read her thought, later on “because of His own word.” 
Christ gave them the opportunity of knowing Him by re- 
maining in their city two days. It was an act, no doubt, 
horrifying to His disciples, but it left only pleasant memories 
on His own mind. He appears to have formed a high 
opinion of these pariahs of Jewish civilization. “City of 
Fools,” as Samaria was, yet its folly was more agreeable to 
Him than the frigid wisdom of Jerusalem. He found the 
people of Samaria genial, kindly, and simple, and perhaps 
through their very alienation from traditional Judaism the 
more readily disposed to hear new truths with tolerance. 
When He would choose a type of simple human kindliness 
it is a Samaritan He chooses, boldly placing the fine conduct 
of the Samaritan in contrast with the callousness of priests 
and Levites to human suffering. The good Samaritan has 
become a synonym of social sympathies. In an incident 
recorded by St. Luke the Samaritan is also represented as a 
type of pious gratitude. Ten lepers are cleansed, but one 
only returns to give thanks, and he is a Samaritan. The 


118 THE MAN CHRIST TES Ot 


drift of Christ’s mind is clearly discerned in these incidents. 
He found with pain that He came unto His own, and His 
own received Him not; but from pagans and pariahs He 
never failed to receive a tolerant hearing and often an affec- 
tionate welcome. So marked was His sympathy with the 
Samaritans that in one of the passionate disputes into which 
He was drawn with the Jews, His antagonists did not hesi- 
tate to accuse Him of being a Samaritan. “Thou art a 
Samaritan, and hast a devil” is their bitter taunt. His 
reply is a reaffirmation of the truth He first taught at the 
well of Sychar, that true religion is in essence spiritual, and 
that to do the will of God is more than theological systems 
or the boasts of ancestry. 

These two instances of Christ’s relations with individuals 
are typical of many others. It is obvious that many who 
heard Him speak, heard Him but once. At some given 
point His path intersected theirs; He talked with them for 
a few moments, tarried with them it may be for a night, sat 
with them at a meal, and then went upon His way, and they 
saw Him no more. But so powerful was the spell of His 
personality that in these rapid interchanges of thought 
human lives were irrevocably altered. The seed of truth 
thus scattered with a lavish hand rarely failed to spring up. 
If such incidents do nothing else, they give us an overwhelm- 
ing sense of His power and personality. They teach us how 
little able we are to judge aright many features of His min- 
istry which appear incredible, by teaching us the impossibil- 
ity of all comparison. For the first time there begins to 
dawn upon the mind that sublime suspicion once formulated 
by Napoleon, when he said, “I tell you that I understand 
men, and Jesus was more than a man.” It is in the con- 
templation of the alleged miracles of Christ that we usually 
fall back on this conviction; but assuredly the miracles 


JESESTAND THE ENDIVIDUAL — T19 


themselves do not appear more miraculous than the instan- 
taneous and enduring effects of a few words uttered by Jesus 
in altering human lives. All that the wisest can say in such 
a case is that no wisdom is competent to measure rightly the 
personality of Jesus. It is unique in history, and its effects 
are also unique. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE MIRACLE-WORKER 


THE arrival of Jesus at Cana was signalized by one of His 
best authenticated acts of mercy. At Cana He was met by 
a certain ruler, or Roman official of some rank, whose son 
lay sick in Capernaum of a fever. The distressed father be- 
lieved his child to be at the point of death, and as a last 
resource sought help of One who had already achieved the 
reputation of a thaumaturgus. Jesus expresses in the clear- 
est language consistent with sympathy and courtesy His dis- 
inclination to interfere. It is only when the ruler exclaims 
in an agony of love and vehemence, “Sir, come down ere my 
child die,” that Jesus melted toward him. He does not re- 
turn with the ruler to Capernaum ; He contents Himself with 
the definite assurance that the sick child will not die. This 
assurance the father receives in perfect faith. He returns to 
Capernaum ; meets upon the way his own servants, who haye 
ridden out with the glad tidings that his son is convalescent ; 
inquires at what hour the amendment had begun, and finds 
that it synchronizes with the hour when Jesus said unto 
him, “Thy son liveth.” A coincidence so remarkable was 
naturally interpreted as a miracle. Its immediate effect was 
greatly to enhance the reputation of Jesus in Galilee, and to 
add to the growing circle of His disciples one household of 
considerable social eminence in Capernaum. 

So far as this particular story goes it offers no difficulties. 
We are told that the illness from which the child suffered 
was a fever, the symptoms of which were no doubt described 

120 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 121 


by the anxious father, and the nature of which was probably 
quite familiar to Jesus, to whom the local maladies of Gali- 
lee had been a natural subject of observation. From these 
data it would be easy to deduce a prophecy of the child’s re- 
covery. The modern physician, trained by long experience 
in habits of intuition and deduction, often ventures on such 
a positive verdict, and is rarely mistaken. Jesus in this case 
did nothing more than such a physician in the course of a 
wide practice often does. Nor is it necessary to depart from 
the relatively rational ground of coincidence in noting that 
the child’s turn for the better happened at the very hour 
when Jesus dismissed the father with an assurance of his 
recovery. Such a coincidence would have a certain occult 
value with the ignorant, but in itself it is of slight impor- 
tance. Things as startling have happened many times in 
history and in individual experience. A mind predisposed 
to faith in the supernatural is always prepared to interpret 
a coincidence as a miracle; and it was in entire accordance 
with the spirit of the times that this singular case of healing 
should have been so interpreted. 

The last consideration is of vital importance in any serious 
review of the alleged miracles of Christ. The world of 
Christ’s time had no system of medicine, and still less had it 
any scientific knowledge of natural law. Disease was com- 
monly regarded as the work of evil spirits, and hence exor- 
cism was common. Natural law, as an inevitable sequence 
of cause and effect, was not so much as apprehended, except 
by a very few superior minds of Greece and Rome. The 
average Roman was in most things fully as superstitious as 
the Oriental. Lucretius, the greatest philosophic poet of 
antiquity, who was the first to outline the superb order of 
the universe, was regarded by his contemporaries as an athe- 
ist. As for the Jew, his entire history had trained him to a 


122 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


fixed belief in supernaturalism. The occult was interwoven 
at all points in the national history, and ordinary events 
were habitually interpreted in relation to spiritual forces. 

The East has always had a peculiar power of producing 
necromancers. ‘Thus, when Moses essayed to work miracles 
in the presence of Pharaoh, he soon discovered that the ma- 
gicians of Egypt were able to rival him on his own ground. 
Elijah and Elisha were regarded as magicians. Hlsha was 
supposed to have made iron swim—a piece of pure magic in 
the sense in which an Indian juggler would use the term ; 
and tradition further stated that both these great prophets 
had raised the dead. Curiously mingled in the history of 
Elijah and Elisha are indications that some of their acts were 
conditioned by a superior knowledge of nature. LHlisha, by 
a very simple knowledge of chemistry, was able to sweeten a 
brackish spring, and to destroy the effects of poison in a pot 
of broth by an antidote. Each of these acts, however, passed 
for a miracle. It would be tedious to enlarge the category. 
The point to be observed is that the world had not in Christ’s 
day attained a rational attitude toward phenomena. Any act 
out of the common was esteemed miraculous, and miracle 
was demanded from a great teacher as an evidence of his au- 
thority. It naturally follows that many acts of such a 
teacher, in themselves quite explicable, became rapidly dis- 
torted by the common faith in the miraculous; and having 
once taken the dye of miracle the original texture is no longer 
discernible. 

In dealing with the vexed question of miracle it is a safe 
rule to seek a natural explanation of any act described as 
miraculous, where such an explanation is possible. It does 
not follow, however, that the account of the act given by a 
contemporary historian is insincere, fraudulent, or meant to 
deceive, because it furnishes us with a supernatural instead 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 123 


of a natural explanation. Nothing is clearer in Gospel his- 
tory than that Christ was universally credited with the power 
of working miracles. He believed in His own power of 
miracle-working ; His disciples, who had every opportunity 
of knowing the facts, believed in this power; and, what is of 
yet greater significance, His enemies, who had every reason 
to deny His miracles, accepted them as indubitable. Nico- 
demus, in his famous interview with Christ, began by ex- 
pressing the opinion that no one could do the wonderful 
works that Christ did, if God were not with him. The 
Pharisees on a subsequent occasion attributed these same 
wonderful works to collusion with demons and evil spirits ; 
but in neither case was there any attempt to deny that acts 
had been done which could be described only as miraculous. 
The old dilemma proposed to the Christian thinker was this : 
either these statements which attributed miracles to Christ 
were true or false; if true it was blasphemy to question 
them ; if false, the whole cause of Christianity stood discred- 
ited. But there is a middle course, at once more rational 
and more reverent. Christianity is not discredited unless it 
can be proved that Christ wilfully deceived Himself and oth- 
ers, and played the part of a charlatan in these acts. Nor is 
the story of an alleged miracle false because it contains in- 
credible statements. The story may contain both absolute 
truth and unconscious misrepresentation. A full and just al- 
lowance must be made for the mental characteristics of the 
narrator and of the time in which he lived. If we can settle 
the main question, which is the absolute sincerity of the his- 
tory with which we are dealing, we are then perfectly free to 
apply the tests of criticism to the history ; and in doing this, 
it is, as I have said, a safe rule to seek a natural explanation 
of any act described as miraculous, where such an explana- 
tion is possible. 


124 THESMAN CHRIST JESUS 


But it will be asked, Is a natural explanation of these as- 
tonishing deeds possible? We have seen that the recovery 
of the ruler’s son, which is specifically described by St. John 
as “the second miracle that Jesus did,” was not necessarily 
a miracle at all. Christ Himself makes no such claim. His 
own words are plain: “Go thy way, thy son liveth.” He 
states a fact of which He is inwardly assured, and the event 
proves that He is right. The modern thinker is content to 
let the story stand thus, as an instance of profound premoni- 
tion. The actual spectator, living in an age which was filled 
with faith in supernaturalism, could hardly help himself in 
introducing an element of the occult into the story, and de- 
scribing it as a miracle. What each does is simply to re- 
duce the same factors to the intellectual terms of his time. 
The wise man, in contemplating these widely different pro- 
cesses, would say that each should be free to believe as he 
pleases, as long as his belief in the sincerity of Christ and 
of His biographers remains untouched. 

If it be a safe rule to prefer a natural to a supernatural 
explanation of any alleged miracle, a yet higher axiom of 
wisdom is that no temper is so fatal to research as invincible 
incredulity. One of the greatest masters of science in our 
own day has laid down the rule that the true scientist should 
show himself extremely reluctant to deny any kind of phe- 
nomenon, merely because it appears unintelligible. “Scien- 
tific sagacity consists in being very careful how we deny the 
possibility of anything,” says Flammarion. Such a counsel 
is of especial value in relation to the miracles of Christ. We 
have already seen that the closer we come to the personality 
of Jesus the more does the conyiction grow that there was an 
element in that personality which transcends all that we 
know of ordinary human nature. With a single glance or 
word He was able to produce immeasurable effects on indi- 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 125 


viduals. Even in His last humiliation, when armed men 
rushed upon Him in the garden of Gethsemane, there streamed 
from Him a power that hurled them backward, and brought 
them to their knees. Is it not easily conceivable, then, that 
this force of personality should have an extraordinary effect 
upon disease? A case in point suggests itself from the life 
of Catherine of Siena. Father Raymond relates that in the 
time of plague in Siena he came home exhausted by his la- 
bors, and felt himself sickening for death. Catherine then 
“laid her pure hands upon him,” prayed over him, sat by 
his side till he fell asleep, and when he woke he was per- 
fectly well. The story suggests at once a case of healing by 
magnetic force or hypnotism, joined with strong faith in the 
person healed. Many of the cures wrought by Jesus sug- 
gest the same process. He usually demands faith in the 
sick person as a condition of the experiment He is besought 
to make. He is conscious on one occasion of “virtue” hav- 
ing gone out of Him—a most significant phrase. A continu- 
ous impression is produced of a person of extraordinary 
vitality, gifted with the rarest and highest quality of magnetic 
force, moving among ordinary people and establishing over 
them an absolute control. Now we know very little of the 
limits and conditions of such forces as these; and what we 
know is so astounding that we cannot but feel that this is 
pre-eminently a case for that scientific sagacity which denies 
the possibility of nothing. 

Whatever was the exact nature of this power which Christ 
exercised, it is certain that it did much to give effect to His 
ministry. Yet there was no inherent reason in the mere act 
of miracle-working to produce this result. When the Phari- 
sees said that He worked miracles by collusion with demons 
they expressed a common conviction that supernatural power 
had nothing necessarily Divine in it. It made Him formida- 


126 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


ble, but it did not prove Him good. And it is also easy to 
see that such a power was as likely to repel men as to at- 
tract them. It did indeed in one instance repel men; so 
great a spirit of terror was produced that the inhabitants of a 
whole province besought Christ to depart out of their coasts. 
How was it, then, that the miracles of Christ proved a most 
effective help to His ministry? Simply because they were 
invariably devoted to moral and benignant ends. From first 
to last He wrought no miracle on His own behalf. He, who 
fed the multitudes, was Himself hungry; He, who raised the 
dead, died. There was thus produced a profound impression 
of the unselfishness of Christ. In after-times it became the 
basis of the great Pauline doctrine of the voluntary humilia- 
tion of Christ. But at the time it was felt rather as a won- 
derful proof of the benignity of God. Men praised God that 
such power was given unto men: they should also have seen, 
and perhaps in part did see, that the divinest element in this 
power was its restraint. Even if the power were much more 
circumscribed than the story of the miracles would lead us 
to believe, yet it is evident that it was sufficient to lay the 
kingdoms of this world at the feet of Christ. Had personal 
ascendancy, culminating in Kingship and Empire, been His 
aim, He possessed a weapon by which the wildest ambitions 
might have been gratified. That weapon was never used. 
His Divine unselfishness was thus vindicated, and in the de- 
gree that this unselfishness was realized, the spiritual end 
of His ministry was served. 

The restraint with which Christ used His power of work- 
ing miracles has another aspect. It might be argued that 
since a power so astounding was invariably used for benig- 
nant ends, benignity itself would dictate the widest possible 
use of this power. Why should Jesus have been content to 
use this power but rarely? Why heal an occasional leper, 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 127 


when by a word leprosy itself might have been extinguished 
throughout a whole city or countryside? There is some- 
thing very remarkable about the apparently accidental char- 
acter of Christ’s miracles. A blind man or a leper meets 
Him, and on the sudden dictate of pity He heals him. His 
meeting with the sad procession which issued from the city 
of Nain, bearing to the tomb the only son of the mother who 
is a widow, is plainly accidental. There is no instance of a 
miracle deliberately planned. But if we grant the posses- 
sion of a real power of working miracles, we should naturally 
expect deliberately planned miracles. We should have at 
least expected that Jesus Himself would have chosen with 
the utmost care the place, the time, the opportunity. And, 
returning to the wider aspect of the whole problem, we 
should certainly expect a much more generous use of mirac- 
ulous power than we find. 

The answer to these questions lies in Christ’s own concep- 
tion of His mission among men. That mission was spiritual. 
Its supreme aim was not to save the bodies of men but their 
souls. But man, being what he is, is far more concerned 
about his body than his soul. Defective virtue is to him 
scarcely a matter of acute regret, but defective physical 
health is to him a cause of pain, of dismay, and of humilia- 
tion. Christ was perfectly aware of this characteristic of 
human nature, and grieved over it. He saw that its inevita- 
ble tendency, as it affected Himself, must be that He would 
find Himself far more highly valued as a miracle-worker 
than as a teacher. Men followed Him not for the bread of 
life which He gave them, but for the loaves and fishes. In 
the degree that His reputation as a wonder-worker rose, the 
real significance of His mission as a teacher sent of God was 
forgotten. Miracles, seen from this point of view, so far 

from forwarding the purposes dearest to His heart, really re- 


128 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


tarded them by producing a wrong estimate of His character. 
The dilemma thus created is perfectly apparent. On the one 
hand, mere humanity of feeling demanded that a power of 
alleviating human suffering in no common way should be 
widely used; on the other hand, there was the peril that this 
power, if allowed the widest operation demanded by a warm 
compassion, would defeat the very purposes for which the 
life of Christ was lived at all. Christ’s way out of the di- 
lemma was to restrain the exercise of His power to the 
narrowest limits consistent with a sense of humanity. Hence 
we find that He often wrought miracles with extreme reluc- 
tance. On one occasion He sighed deeply when about to 
restore sight to a blind man, recognizing that the anxious 
group gathered round Him cared far more for a physical 
good than for the best spiritual good that He could offer 
them. He complained of the hardness of heart which was 
incapable of recognizing a Divine truth without some earthly 
sign. If He had spoken His whole mind to the blind man 
over whom He sighed, He would have said that it was better 
to enter into the Kingdom of God maimed, than having two 
eyes to be cast into hell fire. He constantly warned those 
whom He had healed to keep the matter secret, because He 
did not wish to be known as a necromancer or exorcist. 
This desire for secrecy, the expressed wish to keep hidden 
what in the nature of things could not be concealed, has 
often seemed to the reader of the Gospels an insincerity. 
But it is perfectly intelligible on the grounds already stated. 
Christ wished to be believed for His word’s sake; it was 
only when He found how impossible it was for average hu- 
manity to rise to this ideal height, that He took lower 
eround, and adjured men if they could not believe Him for 
His word’s sake at least to believe Him for His work’s sake. 
Perhaps in taking this ground Christ also foresaw that in 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 129 


the long run, tried by the judgment of the ages, miracles 
were more likely to retard His cause than to serve it. It is 
an obvious reflection that the very element in His ministry 
which helped His cause most among His contemporaries has 
with later generations become more and more a stone of 
stumbling and a rock of offence. The modern student of 
Christianity, bred in the schools of an exact science, will 
often find himself wishing that the “miraculous element” in 
the Gospels could be eliminated. It is a vain wish, because 
the “miraculous element” not merely runs through the 
Gospels, but is the great cohesive force that binds them into 
unity. We have to take things as we find them. The main 
point is not whether the recorded miracles are absolutely 
exact historic statements, but whether they are sincere state- 
ments. ‘There can be no doubt on this point. Men reported 
what they honestly believed themselves to have seen and 
known. If we can be sure of this the rest is a matter of 
relative indifference. Truth is an essence, not a form. The 
form may be capable of various interpretations; essential 
truth speaks in one uniform accent which never appeals in 
vain to the man of sincere temper. 

It may be remembered, however, that Christ Himself never 
attached the value to miracles which His followers did even 
in His own lifetime. He treated them as purely subsidiary 
to His teachings, as accommodations of His method to meet 
the weaknesses of human nature. In the conclusion of one 
of His greatest parables, that of Dives and Lazarus, His con- 
viction of the abiding inutility of miracles as a means of con- 
version is stated with great force. Most men, in regretting 
their scepticism concerning an unseen world, would be ready 
to say that nothing would convince them so completely as a 
real apparition, coming to them across the gulf of silence 
and the grave. To see a ghost, and to be sure that we saw 

9 


130 |) RHE MANICHRISTFESUS 


it, would be proof positive, we think, of a world of life 
beyond the illusion of the grave. Death would then be 
meaningless to us, extinction incredible, annihilation an ab- 
surd impossibility. And we think, further, that one such 
solemn experience as this would be eflicacious to change 
our whole scheme of conduct with a thoroughness which all 
the wisdom of the philosophers and the prophets could not 
achieve. Christ contradicts the truth of these familiar specu- 
lations, and declares them illusions. He who will not hear 
Moses and the prophets would not believe though one rose 
from the dead. The man who cannot or will not attain to 
goodness under the normal conditions of human life would 
never do so under abnormal conditions. In course of time 
the most acute impression of terror wears off; or if it be 
often repeated, it is with an ever-lessening impression, till at 
last it ranks with the normal, and as such is easily despised. 
This was a train of thought which Christ often applied to 
His miracles. He saw that as men became used to them 
they became indifferent to them, and even forgot them. 
Hence He refuses to base His claim on miracles. He leaves 
men to think what they will of them; the greater question 
is what they think of Him? When, therefore, theology de- 
mands an absolute faith in miracles as the first condition of 
faith in Christ, it is acting in direct opposition to His spirit. 
If we only believe in Christ because of the miracles which 
He wrought, we do not really believe at all. He Himself 
encourages us to put miracles in a subsidiary relation to 
Himself; for it is not as a miracle-worker that Jesus has 
won the hearts of humanity, but as the Lover of Souls, who 
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

The case may be summed up thus, then. There can be 
no doubt that Jesus believed that He wrought miracles, and 
that this belief was shared by His disciples, His friends, and 


THE MIRACLE-WORKER 131 


even by His enemies. The reports of these astounding acts 
are conditioned by the mental characteristics of the time. 
They vary in credibility, and we are at liberty to distinguish 
the degree of credibility in each. They differ from the com- 
mon acts of the necromancer, and even the miraculous acts 
of the prophets, in this—that they were never wrought for 
selfish or revengeful, but always for benignant ends. They 
fit into the scheme of Christ’s mission by illustrating His 
own unselfishness and benignity of spirit, and hence were of 
potent service in promoting His authority over men. On 
the other hand, He Himself always treated them as sub- 
sidiary to His main work, which was to save and redeem the 
souls of men. Their accidental character strengthens the 
conviction of their authenticity. Their abiding value is that 
they illustrate the temper of Christ, and through Christ the 
temper of God toward man. Tinally, where they are most 
confounding to the reason, we have to remember that we 
have a most imperfect apprehension of the personality of 
Christ, and are therefore unable to judge the effects of that 
overwhelming personality upon others. 

These considerations must guide us, and always be in our 
minds as we now follow the story of Jesus to its tragic and 
sublime close. With His return from Jerusalem to Caper- 
naum, the full scheme of His ministry is developed. He 
henceforth treads a path more lofty than was ever scaled by 
mortal. His lfe abounds in incidents such as are found in 
no other human life. To great multitudes He is known to 
the end only as the Miracle-Worker ; to an elect few, whose 
numbers slowly multiply, as He Himself desires to be known 
—a, Redeemer in whose hands lay the spiritual destinies of the 
world. 


CHAPTER X 
THE NEW SOCIETY 


WE now find Jesus fully launched upon His career as a 
Man with a Mission. His whole time and strength are 
henceforth absorbed in continual public teachings and acts 
of mercy, which often leave Him no leisure so much as to 
eat. His wanderings from town to town obey no definite 
programme, although they are governed by a general pref- 
erence for the shores of Galilee. When we remember how 
vast has been the influence of these busy years upon the 
fortunes of the world, it is surprising to find how circum- 
scribed was the geographical area of Christ’s ministry. 
Capernaum, Bethsaida, and Magdala, towns closely identified 
with some of His most remarkable words and acts, lie closely 
together in the northern reach of the Lake of Galilee. Tibe- 
rias, the only surviving town upon the lake, He is supposed 
never to have entered; although it must be confessed that 
the reasons given for this tradition are entirely inadequate. 
The little town of Nain, lying close to the older town of 
Endor, between Mount Tabor on the north and the moun- 
tains of Gilboa on the south, Christ entered but once, and 
this was the nearest approach to the great plain of Esdraelon, 
famous for its associations with Gideon and Saul, Elijah and 
Ahab, and some of the more momentous of Israelitish battles. 
In the last year of His life He penetrates northward as far 
as the Roman town of Ceesarea Philippi and Mount Hermon, 
which was undoubtedly the Mount of Transfiguration; but 
the great city of Damascus, plainly visible from the slopes 

132 


THE NEW SOCIETY 133 


of Hermon, the oldest city in the world, which was metro- 
politan even in the time of Abraham, Christ never visited. 
He appears at one time to have made a brief missionary 
journey to the northern seaward towns, including Sidon and 
Tyre, but the important southern towns of Joppa and Gaza 
were unvisited. Samaria and Jericho He knew, for these 
were important cities easily accessible on the way to Jerusa- 
lem; but Bethlehem and Hebron, towns which lie but a little 
south of Jerusalem, the first of which was full of sacred as- 
sociations, are not named in the record of the Gospel minis- 
try. The entire area thus defined is about one hundred 
miles from north to south, with a breadth rarely exceeding 
twenty or thirty miles; yet in this narrow theatre the great- 
est events in human history were transacted. 

The greatest event of all in these years was the establish- 
ment of what may be called the New Society. We have seen 
that immediately on His return from the baptism at Jordan, 
Jesus began to call disciples, which was an act entirely in 
accord with Jewish precedent. It was a common thing for 
a famous Rabbi to surround himself with neophytes, whom 
he instructed in his own peculiar tenets; but we soon find 
Jesus greatly enlarging this process, and giving it an entirely 
new definition and significance. If one were asked to state 
what single feature in the career of Christ is so distinct and 
original as to separate Him from all other teachers, no 
doubt a variety of replies would suggest themselves to the 
mind. One might name His enthusiasm for humanity, an- 
other His complete devotion to truth, and yet another the 
manner of His death. But each of these replies would soon 
be found inadequate, because we should readily discover 
similar features in the careers of other great teachers and 
reformers. Buddha also was distinguished by an intense 
love of humanity, Socrates by an invincible devotion to 


134 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


truth, and many martyrs have endured a painful death with 
an equal courage and tranquillity. We have to look deeper, 
and we find the only adequate answer to the question is this 
singular feature of Christ’s ministry, that He founded a New 
Society with Himself as Centre. His true Gospel was not 
in anything He said; it was Himself. The most divinely 
original of all His acts and teachings was contained in a 
single phrase—“ Follow Me.” In uttering this phrase He 
established within the life of the world His own life, as a 
new centre of gravity and cohesion, and He thus made per- 
sonal loyalty to Himself the vital force which was to trans- 
form the whole organism of Society. 

We may measure the audacity of this act by a few quite 
obvious comparisons. ‘Thus, for example, in saying, “ Fol- 
low Me,” Jesus said what no Hebrew prophet had dared to 
say. The prophet was a personage of unique authority and 
influence, who was capable of exercising a vital control over 
the national destinies. He was peculiar to Hebrew history, 
and was indeed born out of the moral intensity of the He- 
brew race. His supreme mission was to bring human so- 
ciety into conformity to the will of God. He appeared at 
intervals, coming now from the court and the Temple, now 
from the sheepfold and the desert, but always securing an 
authority and reverence such as kings seldom knew. He 
was prepared to set himself, and often did set himself, in 
solitary antagonism against a whole nation—arraigning, 
judging, and condemning it. But sublime as was the self- 
confidence of the prophet, he never dared to suggest himself 
as the centre of a new society. He declared truth, but he 
suppressed himself. Neither Moses, Elijah, nor John the 
Baptist ever imagined that by creating a general and pas- 
sionate sense of loyalty to themselves they could change the 
whole structure of society round about them. But Jesus did 


Tithe NEW /SOCTE TY 135 


‘imagine this, and boldly suggested Himself as the source 
and authority of a new life out of which a new world would 
spring. 

We have already mentioned the great name of Socrates. 
Few writers on the life of Jesus have been able to avoid the 
parallel suggested by the life of Socrates, nor is there any 
good reason why they should, since the resemblance between 
Socrates and Christ is in many ways remarkable. We find in 
Socrates a noble jealousy for truth such as Christ would have 
ardently approved. We see Socrates calling disciples round 
him, even as Christ did; explaining truth to them with an 
infinite patience, enabling them to realize that to know the 
truth is the only freedom; himself meanwhile bearing in- 
dignity and scorn, poverty and hardship, with the complete 
philosophic indifference of one to whom the only real life is 
the life of the spirit. But there the parallel ends, except in 
so far as the death of Socrates reveals those Divine qualities 
of fidelity and courage which make all martyrs one. Socra- 
tes never said, “Follow me.” He valued loyalty to the ideas 
he formulated, but passionate allegiance to himself he neither 
desired nor demanded. Christ, on the contrary, demands 
not so much intellectual conviction as personal loyalty. He 
never speaks of truth after the impersonal manner of Socra- 
tes; “Zam the Truth,” is His great formula. The counsels 
of Christ upon life and conduct greatly transcend in cogency 
and truth all that has come to us from the noblest philo- 
sophic minds of Greece and Rome, and he who follows these 
counsels can hardly fail to attain a high level of philosophic 
peace and virtue. But Christianity is not primarily a phil- 
osophy, and its real bond is not so much truths held in com- 
mon as a common loyalty to its Divine author. Its initia- 
tory rite is love: “Simon Peter, lovest thou Me?” Its bond 
of unity is love: “I am in the Father, and ye in Me: He 


136 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 
that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love 


him, and will manifest Myself unto him.” Its inspiration 
for every species of right conduct is love: “If ye love Me, 
ye will keep My commandments.” The voice of Christ, in 
its appeal to the human race, perpetually reiterates this call 
to adoring loyalty, and it is by the force of this loyalty to 
Himself that Christ expected to create, and has created, a 
new society. 

There is an old saying to the effect that the Roman went 
to the priest for his religion, but to the philosopher for his 
morality, and substantially this is a fair representation of 
the thought of the ancient world. Religion is thus seen as 
altogether divorced from conduct. Philosophy is also seen 
as a system of ethics which is destitute of religious sanction. 
The most that it aimed to do was to furnish a wise plan of 
life, based upon considerations of utility. But it is obvious 
that a man may attain a high degree of philosophic wisdom, 
without attaining fine emotions, or even at the expense of 
fine emotions. He may be wise without being moral, learned 
without being kind, sagacious without being loving or loy- 
able, a scholar or a sage without possessing a single attrac- 
tive quality which would make us deplore his death. Thus, 
the inconsistencies of Seneca afford one of the saddest ironies 
of history, and our admiration of the wisdom of the philos- 
opher is constantly tempered by our scorn for the flatterer 
of Nero, intent on ease and luxury even while he preaches 
the beauty of virtue and the pleasures of poverty. But the 
career of Seneca affords a theme for reflections far more 
humbling than any that sprung from the exercise of irony. 
It illustrates the impotence of the highest kind of intellec- 
tual wisdom of itself to produce perfection of character. Had 
the philosopher been able to redeem society from corrup- 
tion, society had surely been redeemed long before the days 


PILE NEW SOCIBNTY 137 


of Christ, for the intellectual world had long sat at the feet 
of the philosophers. And had Jesus offered the world noth- 
ing but a Divine system of philosophy, His failure had not 
been less complete than theirs. But Christ approached the 
vast problem of the regeneration of the world from a totally 
different standpoint. The weapon which He proposed for 
this tremendous task was the power of a new affection. 


‘‘We live by admiration, hope and love,”’ 


is a familiar lne of Wordsworth’s, which, put into slightly 
more definite language, means that we are ruled by our emo- 
tions and affections. Christ proposed Himself as worthy of 
the most sacred affection man could feel. Religion and 
morality, no more divorced, were united and incarnated in 
Him. ‘To love Him therefore became synonymous with a 
love of truth, virtue, and piety; and in the degree that this 
love was sincere and deep, men became units in a new so- 
ciety whose supreme aim was the reproduction of His tem- 
per and His spirit. 

No doubt the method which Christ thus deliberately 
adopted for the creation of a new society is surprising, and 
in any other teacher it would be both offensive and inade- 
quate. Socrates would certainly have hesitated to suggest 
his own life as the pattern of universal life. Seneca was so 
far from admitting such a thought that he has confessed in 
language both pitiable and pathetic that the most he could 
claim for himself was that he “wished to rise to a loftier 
gerade of virtue. But,’ he added, “I dare not hope it. Tam 
preoccupied with vices. All I require of myself is not to be 
equal to the best, but only to be better than the bad.” This 
may be the language of undue self-depreciation, but it is a 
kind of language well understood among men. The best 


138 HE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


and wisest of men will scarcely claim to be all that he de- 
sires to be. The purest of human teachers is only too con- 
scious of error, infirmity, and fault, and this consciousness is 
his torture. But Jesus never admits in Himself the ordinary 
weaknesses of human nature. He is bold enough to challenge 
the Pharisees to convict Him of sin. The tormenting dis- 
parity between an ideal of conduct and its accomplishment, 
common eyen with the best men, He never felt. His whole 
nature was wrought into such fine moral harmony that the 
usual discords between faith and practice were annihilated. 
Alone among the sons of men He appears complete in vir- 
tue, and hence He alone can dare to say, without fear of re- 
buke or ridicule, “ Follow Me.” 

If the force of personal loyalty be deemed inadequate for 
the creation of a new society, we may well ask what other 
motive can be suggested as superior or more practicable ? 
There are two motives on which men have relied, or at least 
have built great hopes, viz., the love of truth and the enthu- 
siasm of humanity. But it is obvious that neither of these 
motives has ever shown itself potent with the mass of 
humanity. There is nothing that the average man holds in 
greater scorn than abstract truth, and human selfishness ef- 
fectually limits the action of what is called the enthusiasm of 
humanity. Simon Peter was certainly not a lover of his 
race; he was a man full of the bitterest Jewish prejudice, and 
totally destitute of the enthusiasm of humanity. Nor was he 
a man enamored of abstract truth ; he was blunt, literal, prac- 
tical, as little of a philosopher as man could be. He had, 
indeed, too little of the philosophic mind even to appreciate 
or comprehend the surpassing range of thought which Christ 
revealed in His public ministry and daily conversations. 
But Peter was deeply susceptible to fine emotion, and above 
all to the Divine emotion of love. He could make sacrifices 


ee NW Oo OCT DY 139 


for a person which he would never dream of making either 
for humanity or for an abstract truth. And in this Peter 
fairly represented the general temper of mankind. The men 
who will suffer for an idea are few; but almost any man will 
suffer for an idea if that idea appeals to him in the person of 
one whose grace and truth have power to charm the heart. 

It must be remembered, too, that while the ancient philos- 
ophies were a kind of university culture never intended to 
appeal to any but the select few, Jesus made His appeal to 
all kinds and conditions of men. His message was meant to 
reach the toiler in the fields, the fisherman at his nets, the 
artisan at his bench, the beggar in his rags. Nay, more ; 
people ostracized as wholly bad, the pariahs of society, the 
foolish, the perverted, and the despised, the bandit and the 
robber, the wayward daughter of pleasure, the heavy-eyed 
bond-servant of vice—these also won His regard, and won it 
in especial measure by the very sadness of their lot. It is 
an axiom of all true reform, that the reformer must begin 
with the very lowest strata of society if he is to succeed at 
all. If the panacea which he wishes to apply to society is 
impotent to heal the more degraded members of society, it 
will be impotent altogether. It is relatively easy to introduce 
a higher standard of life and thought into the more intelli- 
gent and delicately nurtured classes of a community ; but of 
what avail is this if reform leaves untouched the vicious and 
the criminal classes, thereby confessing its despair of them ? 
But what motive of reform can be suggested, at once so cath- 
olic and so potent that it shall appeal equally to all classes 
of a community? The reply of Jesus is love, and love not so 
much for a Truth as for a Person. At the call of love men 
and women constantly show themselves ready to refashion 
their lives, to part with habits as dear to them as their own 
flesh, to open their hearts to an entirely novel set of sen- 


140 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


sations, to adopt a kind of life, the very laws and system of 
which have been hitherto unknown to them. If you can 
create a noble attachment between a good man and a man far 
from good, that attachment will prove the salvation of the 
weaker man. ‘The constant influence of a high example will 
draw him upward. He will learn to live his whole life with 
constant reference to the approval of his friend. He will 
wish to be lke him, and will be able to conceive of nothing 
better as possible to him than the attainment of such a like- 
ness. And this motive has this supreme advantage—that it 
can and does act irrespectively of all disparities of mind or 
social condition. Intellectual or social equality is not neces- 
sary to an adoring friendship, since goodness and love speak 
a language of their own, equally intelligible to the rich and 
to the poor, the wise and the ignorant, the evil and the 
just. 

It was beside the Sea of Galilee that this cosmic process, 
which in time created a new world, began to declare itself. 
It began with the calling of the Apostles, but it soon ex- 
tended itself to a great number of disciples. At a glance, at 
a sign, at a word, men forsake their habitual tasks, renounce 
their means of livelihood, and follow Jesus. They know well 
that such an association with Christ means hardship, priva- 
tion, and every kind of worldly sacrifice. They will be 
harshly criticized in their homes, jeered at in the streets, and 
denounced in the synagogues. Others will till their fields, 
others will seize with eagerness upon the business they have 
forsaken, and they will be effectually ousted from a place of 
social competence which they have won by long, laborious 
years of industry and exertion. But of these things they do 
not so much as think. The sons of Zebedee leave their fish- 
ing-boat without a murmur ; Matthew rises from his desk, and 
resigns his worldly task without a second thought. They 


dia: SN EMS, SOCLEATLY 141 


are supremely happy; they are inebriated with the joy of 
being with Jesus. They ask nothing of the world, for the 
world has nothing left that it can give them. In many a 
hamlet of the Galilean hills the strange conduct of some son 
or brother is discussed in sorrow or incredulity. He has 
gone a day’s journey to the Lake, and has not returned, but 
surely he will return to-morrow. It can hardly be, except 
upon the theory of sudden madness, that all the things that 
have been most to him in life have ceased to interest him, 
because a new Teacher, of whom many speak ill, has charmed 
him by His speech. But the morrows dawn and wane, and 
he has not returned. News comes that he has been seen 
here and there, footsore and weary it may be, but none the 
less elated in his comradeship with Jesus. The hearts that 
ache for his return slowly learn that Christ has suddenly be- 
come more to him than father or mother, wife or child or 
kindred. Vain for weary eyes of earthly love to scan the 
lake for the returning sail; it comes not, and it will come no 
more. And still beside this lake, where at early dawn the 
eye may recognize Simon and Andrew his brother returning 
from their night of toil, and dragging to land the net full of 
great fishes ; where dark-eyed children such as Jesus blessed 
still play upon the shore, and the very silence of the tur- 
quoise waters and the empty beach, seems full of mystery— 
still, beside this lake the glamor of the Presence lingers, the 
voice of Him who spake as never man spake yet vibrates on 
the silence, and the awestruck heart feels that if Christ did 
indeed repeat His call to-day, that call would prove irresisti- 
ble as of old, nor could all the later wisdom of the world 
stand proof against its magic. 

The society thus inaugurated was a real society, and 
not one in name alone. It consisted of two circles, the apos- 
tles and the disciples. In the first circle the traces of delib- 


142 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


erate organization are clear and definite. Its basis was 
communistic and benevolent. A common purse provided for 
the simple needs of the brotherhood, and the governing 
principle of the common life was the service of humanity. 
There was thus presented to the world the new and admir- 
able spectacle of a company of men entirely freed from 
worldly aims, reconciled to poverty and hardship, animated 
by a common confidence and joy, and employed in tasks 
which added to the store .of human happiness. If the wider 
circle of the disciples was not in like manner wholly separ- 
ated from worldly life, yet it was governed by the same 
spirit. The disciple as well as the apostle called Christ 
Master, and was prepared to set aside all earthly claims for 
His sake. A cold wisdom may find much fault with such 
a scheme of action, and may ask what justification can be 
offered for the wholesale breaking of those ties, and the re- 
nunciation of those duties and obligations by virtue of 
which civil society exists? But the more pregnant aspect of 
the case is that the new society thus formed was the embryo 
of the Christian Church. These men and women, in setting 
aside all earthly obligations in order to serve Christ, affirmed 
the vital principle, that henceforth in the very centre of the 
world’s life there was implanted another life, full of new re- 
lationships, claiming precedence over all existing laws, and 
linked together by adoring loyalty to Christ. And incredible 
as it seemed that such a society should last, yet it has lasted 
even to the present day. Throughout the centuries, and 
even in the periods of the greatest laxity and corruption, the 
Church of Christ has never failed to attract to itself men and 
women who have sacrificed all worldly hopes for Christ’s 
sake, without a single pang of self-pity. They have held the 
prizes of life but dross for Christ’s sake, as Paul did. They 
have found their deepest joy in friendship with people not of 


PHEONEWs) S@CTE RY 143 


their kin, not their equals either in social condition or in in- 
tellect, who nevertheless were dear to them because they 
shared a common sentiment toward Christ. They have even 
gone to the ends of the earth to impart to peoples naturally 
repulsive and unnaturally degraded, the sentiment of love 
for Christ which they themselves felt, and they have died as 
martyrs sustained only by the ecstasy of that love. The New 
Society which Christ inaugurated has proved itself capable 
of prolonged lfe—or rather, we should say, incapable of . 
death ; and the principle of adoring loyalty to Himself from 
which it sprang has proved itself more efficacious in the re- 
newal of mankind than all the wisdom of the world’s 
philosophies. 

One other feature of this movement must be noticed, be- 
cause without it the whole movement would be unintelligible. 
It is not in human nature to follow an example of impossi- 
ble perfection. Some belief in one’s self, or at least in 
human nature as a whole, is needed before any strenuous 
effort can be made to attain superior virtue. Jesus took 
pains to affirm His faith in the perfectibility of human 
nature. If He revealed Himself as perfect, it was to show 
men the way of perfection. He deliberately counselled men 
to be perfect “even as your Father in heaven is perfect,” an 
impossible command unless we recollect that perfection is a 
matter of degree, and that the lily may be as perfect in its 
fine adjustments as the oak, the dewdrop as fair and exqui- 
site a miracle as the star. If Jesus presented the spectacle 
of a unique perfection, yet after all the constituent elements 
of that perfection were elements found in human nature it- 
self. When a great musician like Dvorak writes his “Sym- 
phony to the New World,” he is not ashamed to take famil- 
iar melodies, and even negro songs as the basis of his 
music; but he uses them with such breadth and mastery 


144 THE MAN CHRIST: TESUS 


that they attain a dignity altogether unsuspected. Even so 
Christ used the common strings of human nature, but 
touched them with a master’s hand. Divine as was the 
music which fell upon men’s ears, yet there ran through it 
familiar notes, the golden threads of common melody, old and 
sweet as human love, and faith, and hope themselves. Thus 
men saw in Christ themselves as they might be. He was 
man in His apotheosis, but still man. His faith in human 
nature was so great that He spoke of Himself as an Exam- 
ple, and taught men to hope that they might attain to the 
mind that was in Him, and hereafter be for ever where He 
was. Adoration in itself would have had no permanent up- 
lifting power; adoration joined with endeavor and with hope 
is the mightiest of all forces in the growth of character ; and 
the redemption which Christ achieved for man is the achieve- 
ment of a new hope and endeavor kindled in man’s own 
bosom, and fed by adoring love. 


CHAPTER XI 
ONE OF THE DAYS OF THE SON OF MAN 


AN ordinary biography seldom attempts more than the 
general description of the thoughts and purposes of a human 
life. An exact diary is wanting, for there are few lives that 
can endure the test of a faithful diary. Such a record soon 
becomes a wearisome and ungrateful task, and a sense of 
triviality weighs upon the mind. But the life of the Son of 
Man contains a long series of events, each one of which is of 
undying interest to humanity. The diary of that life con- 
tains nothing trivial, insignificant, or unworthy. The days 
of the Son of Man are revelations and epitomes: revelations 
of what human life can be in its highest dignity and grace ; 
epitomes of the kind of thoughts, tempers, and acts which 
make human life Divine. 

The story of a single day in a memorable life, if faithfully 
told, would certainly do more to explain that life than any 
general description of its progress. Can we discover in the 
Gospels any such specimen days in the life of Jesus? The 
looseness of the Gospel chronology, the Gospels being, as we 
have seen, rather the scattered memorabilia of Christ, drawn 
from many sources, than detailed monographs upon the life 
of Christ, renders such a task difficult. Nevertheless, on two 
occasions in St. Matthew’s Gospel we have what purports 
to be the diary of a single day. One is a day devoted to 
public instruction, the other a day devoted to philanthropic 
toil. Let us follow Christ through these two days of His 
earthly life. In doing so we shall perhaps obtain a clearer 

10 145 


146 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


picture of what that public life was like, what were its 
duties, its toils, and its triumphs, than is possible in any 
general study of the Gospels. 

In the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel we have 
what purports to be the story of a single day of public in- 
struction beside the Lake of Galilee. No fewer than seven 
of the most striking parables of Christ are included in the 
teaching of this single day. St. Mark, in narrating the 
teaching of this same memorable day, even adds another 
parable, and concludes with an account of the storm on the 
lake which subsided at the word of Christ. It is extremely 
improbable that all these great parables were uttered on the 
same day. It is far more likely that they represent a 
course of teaching beside the lake. The common ethical 
idea, which gives a certain unity to these seven parables of 
the sower, of the wheat and tares, of the grain of mustard- 
seed, of the leaven, of the hid treasure, the pearls and the 
fisherman's net, would naturally suggest their association in 
a single category. The memory of one hearer, or group of 
hearers, would supply one parable; other hearers would 
supply other parables; and it would seem to no one an out- 
rage of historic truth that these teachings, so similar in form 
and spirit, should be represented as the sections of one con- 
tinuous discourse. If the Gospels are, as we suppose them, 
the recollections of many minds compiled by writers eager 
to secure information from any source that seemed authentic, 
it would undoubtedly appear to such writers a convenient 
and harmless device to group together, as apparently the 
teachings of a single day, parables which are strikingly alike 
in spirit and design, and which were certainly uttered in the 
same place and to the same audience of Galileans. 

But however we may determine this question of literary 
criticism, the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel does 


PEAY NUE Es OHO RAST. Ta 


unquestionably give us a singularly vivid picture of a day in 
Christ’s life, and of the method of His teaching. Christ was 
at this time the guest of one of His adoring friends in Ca- 
pernaum, perhaps of Simon Peter, or of Chuza, the steward 
of Herod, whose wife Joanna we have mentioned already as 
one of that loyal band of women who were among His earliest 
adherents, and “ministered unto Him of their substance.” 
In the East the business of the day begins at sunrise, and 
with the first ight of day Jesus would rise and seek the 
shores of the lake He always loved. In those meditative 
hours when the spirit of poetry is abroad, and the world, 
bathed in dew and sunlight, seems new created, His mind 
received those images and formulated those ideas which lent 
such ‘lyric charm to the teachings of the day. The fisher- 
man, returning from his night of toil, discerned that solitary 
figure on the beach, and little knew that while he drew his 
nets to land he was furnishing the watchful eye of Jesus 
with immortal images which were destined to delight the 
world through many generations. The sower or the plough- 
man, laboring on the fragrant furrow, knew not that in the 
rude simplicity of his rustic toil were hidden metaphors and 
pictures through which the eternal ideas of human piety and 
truth were to find interpretation. Nature, equally uncon- 
scious of her office, in these hours was also contributing her 
wisdom to the mind of Jesus. The purple anemone, which 
gave the fields the aspect of some intricately patterned Per- 
sian carpet, suggested to Him the exquisite comparison be- 
tween the raiment of the lily, woven on the looms of God, 
and the artificial glories of Solomon. The nesting birds, 
happy in their frugal life, pointed the contrast with the un- 
easy, vain, and careworn life of man. The wide simplicity 
and restfulness of that bright morning world breathed the 
eternal question, old as human thought, and often asked with 


148 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


a sense of torture and despair by those who chafe beneath 
the burden of existence, 


‘¢ And what is life that we should moan, 
Why rake us such ado ?” 


Presently the spell is broken and the sacramental hour of 
thought is at an end. From Capernaum itself, and from 
many a neighboring town and village, throngs of folk ap- 
proach, disrespectful of the privacy of Christ, in the urgent 
need they have for such gifts as He can give them. In the 
crowd are aged men, the weight of whose infirmities seems 
dissolved in the rapture of a novel happiness ; blind men, led 
by expectant friends and relatives ; sick men, carried on theit 
beds or sleeping carpets ; women, dressed in the traditional 
robes of blue and white, bearing children in their arms; 
Pharisees with their broad phylacteries bound on arm and 
forehead; perhaps a passing patrician of Herod’s court 
clothed in purple, or a group of merchants, mounted on their 
silent camels, stained with travel ; and certainly, on the fringe 
of the increasing crowd, conscious of their dreadful mutila- 
tions and their outcast shame, lepers, with half-covered faces, 
uttering their miserable complaint, “ Unclean, unclean.” The 
enthusiasm of this motley crowd is extraordinary. The 
women eyen thrust their children forward to the knees of 
Jesus that He may bless them. And already nearing sails 
upon the lake announce other visitors from Tiberias or the 
wild shores of the country of the Gadarenes; and, hidden 
by the folding of the hills, groups of pilgrims hasten down 
the long descent of the road that joins Cana and Nazareth 
with Galilee. Pressed upon by the tumultuous crowd, Jesus 
retires upon the lake. <A friendly fisherman beckons Him to 
his boat, and He enters it and sits down to teach the multi- 
tude that now throngs the shore. To this strange congrega- 


AY DANIIN THER GLIP ER OterGryRiIST’ 1149 


tion Christ speaks in language entirely adapted to their 
needs. With an infinite condescension, with what proves 
an infinite wisdom too, He speaks in parables which the 
youngest or least keen of wit can understand. Small won- 
der that these sayings of His were remembered with a per- 
fect accuracy ; they were indissolubly linked with images at 
once simple and familiar. There was no one in all this 
various crowd who had not seen the things of which He 
spake; nay, in the unchanging East, where, as by the touch 
of a magician’s wand, life has stood arrested for two thou- 
sand years, he who wanders through the places Jesus trod 
may still discern the very things He saw. ‘They saw, as we 
still see, on these Galilean hills, the shepherd dividing the 
sheep from the goats at sunset; the sudden rain-storm flood- 
ing the narrow gorge with a torrent, which in a moment 
sweeps away the house that stands upon the sand; the 
plougher who, with his hand upon the plough, dares not 
look back, because he has but one hand to guide the cum- 
brous implement, while the other holds the ox-goad, or the 
“prick,” against which the impatient beast kicks in vain; the 
birds of the air, even then devouring the good seed behind 
the sower’s basket, or the tares mingling with wheat, or the 
new corn already burnt up by the sun that beats upon the 
shallow soil. Not only Nature but the crowd itself furnished 
Christ with parables; for the grave merchant on his camel 
had the pearls of price concealed within his bosom; and the 
net which gathered every kind of fish, both good and bad, 
lay upon the shore. So He talked with them, and the long 
day was but as one delightful moment to the listeners. 
Then, as night falls, the boat hoists its sail and stands out 
into the lake; and He, wearied with His toil, falls asleep 
upon a pillow which some kind hand has placed for Him in 
the “hinder part” of the little ship. 


150 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Such is the picture of a day in the life of Christ which 
was devoted to the work of public teaching: “One of the 
days of the Son of Man.” 

If, however, we turn to an earlier chapter of St. Matthew’s 
Gospel—the ninth—we find from the first to the twenty-sixth 
verses an account of a day in Christ’s life much more varied, 
and eyen more impressive in the sense it gives us of the in- 
tense and yet deliberate energy with which He lived. Among 
many things in Christ’s mdde of thought strikingly at vari- 
ance with ordinary Oriental ideas is His habitual conception 
of life as labor and endeayor. He speaks of work as com- 
posing the rhythm of the universe: “My Father works, and 
I work.” He describes Himself as working while it is to- 
day because the night comes when men cannot work, and 
counsels His disciples to live in the same strenuous spirit. 
He speaks in yet intenser language of Himself as straitened 
till His work is accomplished. And in one of His most 
memorable parables, that of the laborers in the vineyard, 
He composes what is really a noble idyll and encomium of 
work, blaming men for the niggard spirit which takes work 
only as a means of material reward, instead of rejoicing in a 
love of work for its own sake. ‘This conception of the dig- 
nity of work is quite at variance with the common languor of 
Oriental thought and life. In lands of great fertility, blessed 
with abundant sunlight, work really occupies but a small 
part of daily life. In such lands the ordinary needs of life 
are soon and easily satisfied, and hence, if the Oriental has 
always been a dreamer it is because the nature of his life af- 
fords him ample time for reverie. But the life of Christ is 
in striking contradiction to the habits of His countrymen. 
It is a continuous expenditure of energy, “unresting and un- 
hasting.” It leaves one breathless with the sense of multi- 
plied and various interests, which made one day in such a 


A DAN TEN TUDE LIP Es OEPICHRIST  16t 


life more than a year in the lives of ordinary men. St. Mat- 
thew gives us the record of such a day, and in this case 
we cannot doubt that the incidents which he enumerates 
really happened in a single day. We cannot doubt for this 
most excellent of reasons, that the day was the most 
memorable of all the days in Matthew’s own life, for it was 
on that day that he received his call to the apostleship. 
Here, then, is an absolutely truthful and minute record of a 
series of events, each one of which must have made a deep 
impression on the mind of the narrator, because they were 
for him an amazing introduction to a new and unexampled 
kind of life. 

Let us follow this day in the life of Jesus; it may serve 
as an epitome of the entire Galilean ministry. 

It begins, as usual, with the earliest light, when Jesus, 
practically expelled from the country of the Gadarenes, 
where His presence has excited panic and dismay, “ enters 
into a ship and passes over, and comes into his own city”’ of 
Capernaum. He immediately goes to the house of one of 
His friends, and the circumstance that on this occasion He 
appears to have taught in the house rather than by the lake- 
side, may perhaps indicate that it was the winter season. 
His arrival was not unexpected. Various doctors of the law 
and Pharisees “out of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and 
Jerusalem,” had already assembled in the hope of hearing 
Him. The scene may be pictured thus: The house in which 
He taught was the residence of some one of superior social 
station; possibly of Chuza, the steward of Herod. It was a 
square structure, with a flat roof protected by a battlement, 
containing a courtyard, round which ran a covered gallery, 
from which the various upper rooms opened. This gallery, 
lit by the mild winter’s sunshine, was the pleasantest place 
in the house, and it was here that Christ sat to address the 


152 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


audience which already thronged the courtyard below to suf- 
focation. At His side, or in one of the upper rooms, con- 
tiguous to the covered gallery, sat the Pharisees and doctors 
of the law, eager and critical of all He said. Suddenly His 
discourse is interrupted by a terrible commotion at the gate- 
way of the courtyard. A group of people, bearing a para- 
lytic man upon his pallet, or some roughly extemporized 
stretcher, is endeavoring to force a way into the densely 
crowded courtyard. This ‘proves impossible, and when the 
tumult has subsided Jesus continues His discourse. But 
these eager friends of the suffering and helpless man are not 
so easily discouraged. Every Eastern house has an outside 
staircase leading to the roof, and it soon appears that the 
custodians of the paralytic, repulsed at the gateway of the 
courtyard, are ascending the stairway to the roof. Itisa 
matter of a few moments only to remove the tiles from the 
roofing of the gallery, and through the opening thus made 
there presently appears the dreadful spectacle of the para- 
lytic, slowly lowered on his pallet to the very feet of Jesus. 
Jesus is much moved by the faith and enterprise which thus 
disregards every obstacle in order to reach Him, and with a 
word He heals the man. This healing act is performed be- 
neath a multitude of curious eyes; it is unquestionably suc- 
cessful. The man who a moment before was incapable of 
the least movement, takes up his bed and walks. 

This miracle of healing is related by three of the Evan- 
gelists, from which we may judge that it made a deep im- 
pression on those who witnessed it, and was regarded by the 
Evangelists themselves as typical. Typical it certainly was 
of the pure and catholic humanity of Christ, for there was 
nothing in this palsied man to distinguish him from a mul- 
titude of fellow-sufferers, and nothing in his subsequent 
career, so far as we know, to justify a Divine interposition 


POO Pon ING Pie Oe cOor RT Sil 1-53 


on his behalf. We are accustomed, in noticing the extraor- 
dinary turns of events by which great men became what they 
were, to think that at least it is not incredible that God 
should make His will manifest in episodes of action and ex- 
perience which were fruitful of good for the entire human 
race. If we may say it with reverence, may we not conclude 
that it was worth God’s while to interfere with the placid 
normal course of human life in the vision that made Saul of 
Tarsus an apostle, or in the thunderstorm which made 
Luther a reformer? But this is, after all, to assume that 
God is a respecter of persons. Christ, in establishing a re- 
higion of humanity, taught an entirely contrary view of God’s 
relations to man. God’s method of saving the world is not 
a method which saves first the best and cleverest people, but 
the ignorant equally with the clever, the humblest equally 
with the highest. In one of His most famous parables 
Christ pushed this truth to an extreme point when He taught 
that it was the duty of the man who gave a feast to invite 
the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind before all other 
persons, for the strange reason that they could not recom- 
pense him. But strange as the counsel seems, yet it is a 
definition of Christ’s own spirit. That spirit is admirably 
shown in this act which heals a man who cannot recompense 
Him by the genius that sets the world aflame, or even by the 
social influence that gives éclaté to His ministry—a man 
wholly poor and inconsiderable who can requite his Healer 
with nothing but gratitude. 

This humane act was not completed without controversy. 
Christ’s address to the man is couched in extraordinary lan- 
guage. He practically treats the man’s infirmity and his sin 
as one, and even hints that his infirmity may have had its 
root in sin. This should scarcely have astonished the Phar- 
isees and doctors of the law, for it was a view of human suf- 


154 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


fering peculiarly Jewish. Without attempting to discuss a 
question so abstruse, we can scarcely doubt that spiritual 
and physical malady are often more closely allied than we 
suspect. Few men who have ever studied life with a physi- 
cian’s eye would dispute that the morbidly delicate nervous 
system not seldom owes something to the follies and indis- 
cretions of youth; that half the diseases to which flesh is 
heir arise from some direct contravention of natural laws; 
that sickness is often thé account that Nature sends to a 
debtor who has wasted his substance in riotous living; and 
perhaps, if the physician dared to speak the whole unpalat- 
able truth to his patient, he would say, “It is not medicine 
you want, but a new conception of life, the freedom from un- 
natural strain, the conquest of unruly appetite.” But it is 
one thing to hold a theory, another thing to see it pushed to 
its logical result. A theory so treated has often the effect of 
irony. When Christ asks, “ Whether is it easier to say, Thy 
sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise and walk?” the Phar- 
isees feel that He is being ironical at their expense, and the 
last thing a pedant can forgive is irony. Thus the first act 
in this memorable day is to provoke in many minds that 
spirt of envenomed controversy, which, slowly gathering 
force, was destined finally to plan and execute the tragedy 
of Calvary. 

This was the event of the early morning; the programme 
of the day was far from finished. The assembly in the house 
of Chuza breaks up in something like tumult and certainly 
in discord. As Christ leaves the house He sees Matthew 
sitting at the seat of custom, and summons him to the apos- 
tleship. Matthew had, perhaps, witnessed the healing of the 
paralytic, and had gone back to his business deeply thrilled 
by what he saw. How poor and mean his occupation must 
have seemed when such marvels were happening at his door: 


ADA TN Tithe VIPER IORSCEPRIS’T 155 


what wonder that he feels the call of Christ an honor, and 
instantly obeys! In his gratitude he at once makes a feast, 
and invites Christ to be his guest. To his table that day 
there naturally crowded many of his personal friends, en- 
gaged like himself in the work of tax-gathering, and “the 
publicans and sinners” sat down to meat with Jesus and His 
disciples. This promiscuity was deeply offensive to such of 
the Pharisees as had followed Christ to Matthew’s house. 
Forgetting that they also were guests, they ask with an un- 
pardonable rudeness, “Why eateth your Master with pub- 
licans and sinners?” Christ’s reply is a touching and dig- 
nified exposition of His whole ministry. He reminds them 
of what had already come to be a cardinal principle in His 
ministry, that He went first not to those who needed Him, 
but to those who needed Him most. He was like an honest 
physician who went not to those who were whole, but to those 
who were sick. Some of John’s disciples, who appear to 
have been present, shocked perhaps by the prodigality and 
joyousness of the feast, interpose with a question about fast- 
ing. Christ replies with another question, “Can the chil- 
dren of the Bride-chamber fast while the Bridegroom is 
with them?” He affirms once more the joyousness of His 
ministry, and its complete emancipation from ascetic scruples. 
He does more—He defines it as something Divinely new, 
which has no need for Jewish sanctions, and cannot be joined 
to the frayed, worn-out fabric of Jewish tradition. “Noman 
putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that 
which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the 
rent is made worse.” Then once more the course of teach- 
ing is interrupted by one of those appeals to His pity which 
Christ never disregarded. A certain ruler, crushed with sor- 
row, fresh from the chamber of mortality, importunes Him 
in language in which faith surely touches its noblest climax 


156 THE VAN ‘GCERESH) Eas 


—“My daughter is even now dead, but come and lay Thy 
hand upon her and she shall live.” And Jesus arose and 
followed him, and so did His disciples. 

And now once more an extraordinary scene unfolds itself. 
Through the narrow streets of Capernaum the whole con- 
course pours to the house of the afflicted ruler. Even as it 
passes wonders happen. A poor woman, wrought into an 
ecstasy of faith, touches the hem of Christ’s garment in the 
throng, and is made whole. The evening is now falling. At 
the door of the ruler’s house the paid mourners are assem- 
bled, chanting the beauty or grace of the dead child ina 
melancholy pan; the flute-players pour shrill music on the 
evening air; within the house, amid tears not mercenary but 
real, already the body of the child is washed and anointed, 
and wrapped in the finest linen for the last journey to what 
the Hebrew exquisitely described as, “The house of meet- 
ing,’ or “The field of weepers.” ‘To this crowd of mourners 
Christ addresses one word—“The maid is not dead, but 
sleepeth.” Whether the child was indeed dead as the father 
supposed, or asleep in some deep trance which simulated 
death, as the words of Jesus would certainly imply, is a 
question that need not be discussed. The beauty of the 
scene is not in the restoration of the child, but in the pity 
and humanity of Christ. Upon the bed of death the fair 
child lies, with folded hands: Christ unlocks these rigid 
palms, and takes her by the hand, and calls upon her to 
arise; and behold the closed lids lift, the eyes are fixed on 
Him in a glance of happy awe; and, fresh and composed as 
one awakened from a wholesome slumber, the child arises, in 
all the glow of youth and health. 

With this act the day closes; for the further incidents re- 
lated in this chapter cannot be definitely identified as hap- 
pening on this day of Matthew’s call. But how wonderful 


Prey UNG Re Ore PRIS bb 7 


is the impression of benignant energy produced by the mere 
recital of these events! Within the brief compass of a win- 
ter’s day we have three gracious deeds of healing: two acute 
controversies, first with the Pharisees and then with John’s 
disciples, each in turn producing expositions of Christ’s 
thought of the highest value and significance ; and finally we 
have an act involving the gravest of responsibilities, the 
choice of an apostle. Not one selfish thought or act intruded 
on it; it was a day lived utterly for others. Nor was it a day 
apart; save in its close sequence of miraculous acts, it is 
but a sample day in the working life of Christ. Perhaps we 
should not treat it as exceptional even in respect of miracles. 
If we are prepared to trust the Gospel records at all, we can- 
not but perceive that the unreported life of Christ must have 
been even more crowded with acts of healing than the re- 
ported. “When the even was come,” says St. Matthew—it 
was an evening in this same town of Capernaum—“ they 
brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils, and 
He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that 
were sick.” What a life of strain and infinite activity was 
this, which found itself always in contact with human mis- 
ery, always ready to respond to the instinct of pity, and amid 
these toils of an infinite benignity still able to conduct a hun- 
dred controversies and to enunciate supreme truths, for the 
discovery of one of which an ancient sage would have counted 
an entire life of meditation an easy price. But such was the 
daily life of Christ, and it is small wonder that those who 
can reflect on these things see on these illumined shores and 
fields of Galilee the footprints of One whom they must needs 
call Divine. All questions of what may justly constitute a 
miracle fade before such a vision; the true and ever-living 
miracle is the Divine Benignity of Christ. 


CHAPTER XII 
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS 


In the meantime, amid this constant stress of public work, 
there was a private life of Jesus, which was lived apart from 
the world and was uninvaded by its tumults. Completely as 
Christ lived for others, yet He reserved those rights in Him- 
self, which are among the most sacred and important since 
they guard the secret and guarantee the growth of person- 
ality. He often sought to be alone. He sometimes fled from 
the multitude He had attracted. The company of His disci- 
ples was not always agreeable to Him. A passion for retire- 
ment sometimes led Him into solitary places, at other times 
to the houses of adoring friends. The public man too often 
cherishes a passion for publicity, which is barely distinguish- 
able from vanity, though it may possibly be an almost noble 
form of vanity; but of such a passion Jesus shows no trace. 
His conduct is a striking lesson in that kind of self-reserva- 
tion which is absolutely necessary to all men, but especially 
to the public man, because without it character deteriorates, 
and the springs of thought are unconsciously impoverished. 

The private life of Jesus may be traced in the nature of 
His friendships. Though He called twelve apostles it would 
appear that He did not admit them to an equal intimacy. 
This distinction of favor in a small society essentially demo- 
cratic was a source of much heart-burning and jealousy. 
Perhaps it did something to alienate the loyalty of the one 
Judean apostle of the group, Judas of Kerioth, and in doing 
this laid the train for that violent explosion of revenge in the 

158 


ree RAVE EE, OP RS US, :) 1b) 


heart of a disappointed man, which culminated in treachery 
and betrayal. But it was a course of action inevitable in the 
nature of the case. There were thoughts and hopes in the 
mind of Christ which could scarcely be confided to the entire 
group of apostles. The general relation of Christ to His 
apostles was that of a master to his scholars, a prophet to 
his neophytes. He explained to them His parables, and 
opened to them the mysteries of the Kingdom of God. His 
chief aim was to prepare them as missionaries of His truth. 
But the original thinker needs a warmer atmosphere than 
this in which his thought may expand. He needs the quick 
and sympathetic comradeship of minds that will discern his 
thoughts almost before they are clear to himself. 'The gulf 
which divides an admiring from an intimate friendship is very 
wide. The intimate friend is he to whom a man ean disclose 
himself with entire freedom, with a happy consciousness that 
love will make good the lacune of his speech, and will even 
permit him that sociable silence which is more interpretative 
than speech. Such intimate friends Jesus found in Peter 
and John, and, in a less degree, in James. For Peter es- 
pecially He cherished a warm affection, which even the great- 
est faults of character were powerless to dissolve. When He 
had anything of importance to communicate it was His cus- 
tom to take these three disciples apart, and talk the matter 
over with them. He permitted them great freedom. Peter 
felt no scruple in rebuking his Master for what seemed to 
him sad and foolish fears about the future. He also ac- 
corded them special privileges. They alone were admitted 
into the chamber where the child of Jairus lay dead. They 
alone were with Him on the snow-clad brow of Hermon when 
He was transfigured. And in all these episodes we see Jesus 
very conscious of His need of friendship, sensitively eager to 
avail Himself of its peaceful pleasures, and constantly with- 


160 THE MAN. CHRIST FRSUS 


drawing from the clamor of a public life to taste its consola- 
tions. 

Christ’s friendship with women was even more remarkable. 
We have already seen that in Capernaum and its neighbor- 
hood there was a group of women “who ministered unto Him 
of their substance.” Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s 
steward, was the chief of these ; an unknown woman, bearing 
the lovely Jewish name of Susanna, or “the lily,” was 
another. It has been suggested that Chuza may have been 
the centurion who besought Jesus in Cana of Galilee to heal 
his son, in which case Joanna would have abundant cause to 
show the liveliest gratitude to Christ. But deserving as these 
names are of immortal recollection, there is one other name 
which eclipses theirs in interest—that of Mary of Magdala. 
Magdala hes in a bend of the lake upon the green plain of 
Gennesaret, at a distance of about two miles from the town 
of Tiberias, and at about double that distance from Capernaum. 
In the days of Christ it was wealthy and prosperous, the 
home of springs which were much valued for dyeing processes, 
the haunt of doves which were bred for the purposes of Tem- 
ple offerings. Many boats anchored in its placid bay; and 
in the little town the sound of the loom was never still. The 
shell-fish found around the shores of Magdala were especially 
valued for the purple dye they yielded—<“ the whelk’s pearl- 
sheeted lip” which gave the famous Tyrrhene dye used in 
the rich dresses of the great was of the same species. Mary 
was, perhaps, the daughter of some wealthy dyer or manu- 
facturer of Magdala. She appears at least to have been the 
mistress of her own moyements, and able to follow Jesus to 
Jerusalem. Until the day when Jesus entered Magdala her 
life had been a misery, and a torture. She was afflicted with 
some obscure form of hysteric disease, which the popular 
phrase of the time, applied to all mental derangements, de- 


id Tee RV ed ee Oe PES US L657 


scribed as “possession of the devil.” But from that day a 
new life opened for Mary of Magdala. She became the he- 
roine of an ideal affection. The world held for her but one 
name and one person. ‘The common error, which has done 
her the gross injustice of making her name the synonym of 
an odious form of vice, is founded on a total misconception 
of her history. The title Magdalene is undoubtedly derived 
from Magdala, and she is called Mary Magdalene merely to 
distinguish her from the other Marys of the Gospels. So 
far is she from deserving the odium of vice, that everything 
in her history points to a nature of extreme sweetness and 
purity, and a character of much nobility. Hereafter we shall 
see the unexampled part she plays in the triumph of the new 
religion; and it will then become of great importance to rec- 
ollect her real character. At present we see her only as one 
of the closest friends of Jesus. 

Along the lake shore, then, there had sprung up a sister- 
hood of sweet and gracious souls whose bond was devotion 
to their Lord. He abode in their houses, He accepted gifts 
from them, and they accounted themselves amply repaid by 
the joy of His society. They gave Him that peculiar sym- 
pathy and highly idealized affection which, to a sensitive and 
lofty nature, are the very spikenard and the frankincense of 
love, rare and precious indeed, and seldom found by even the 
most fortunate. 

In the list of the women friends of Jesus the name of 
Mary of Bethany can never be omitted, although her oppor- 
tunities of association with the Master were perhaps more 
limited because Christ spent much less time in Judea than 
in Galilee. Mary of Bethany appears to have supplied an 
element of intellectual sympathy, always rare in friendships 
between man and woman, and especially rare among the 
women of the East. She was a woman of fine discrimina- 

11 


162 THE MAN‘ CHRIST JESUS 


tion, keen in mind as she was warm of heart, and fitted to 
follow with comprehension the loftier thoughts of Jesus. 
That Christ did make her His confidante is indicated in the 
phrase of St. Luke, “Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and 
heard His word.” St. Luke draws a contrast between Mary 
and her sister Martha, which is clearly unfavorable to 
Martha, and he relates a saying of Christ’s which appears to 
be a gentle irony on Martha’s character. But the very man- 
ner of Christ’s speech reveals the terms of intimacy on 
which He stood with both sisters, for irony, however gentle, 
is a weapon dangerous to friendship, unless the friendship 
be peculiarly secure and intimate. Martha loved Christ as 
sincerely as her sister, but with a kind of affection more prac- 
tical and less tinged with mystic rapture. Both sisters were 
in the secret of Christ's movements, for at the time of their 
brother’s sickness they were able at once to communicate 
with Him in the region beyond Jordan where He was preach- 
ing. In this home at Bethany Christ’s happiest hours were 
spent. It was from this house that He set out on the great 
day when He passed over the Mount of Olives in triumph, 
and entered the Golden Gate of Jerusalem amid the accla- 
mation of the multitude. It was to this house He returned | 
when the day was over. And, as if to show how imperish- 
able was the memory of this home, which had so often been 
the haven of His weariness; how tender His recollections of 
the faithfulness and love which had eased the burden of His 
toilsome days, and soothed His last hours; it is near the 
house of Mary that He takes His eternal farewell of earth : 
“ He led them out as far as to Bethany, and He lifted up His 
hands, and blessed them; and it came to pass while He 
blessed them, He was parted from them and carried up into 
heaven.” 

Bethany remains for ever sacred in the annals of love and 


ae OVA de Oi fag SUS). sb6S 


friendship, but we can hardly doubt that there were many 
other homes that knew something of the secret of Christ’s 
private life. A pleasant air of hospitality pervades a large 
portion of the Gospels. If the Jew ever rose above the pet- 
tiness of race antipathy and dogmatic rancor, it was in the 
exercise of those rites of hospitality which among all Eastern 
peoples are esteemed the most sacred and gracious of all 
duties. It is certainly among Eastern peoples, and those 
alone, if we except certain savage tribes, that a true sense of 
social brotherhood exists. The exclusive family circle and 
the barred door are things peculiar to the jealous civiliza- 
tions of the West. But in the East the path is made easy 
for the stranger and the wanderer by a dignified hospitality 
which treats a guest rather as the temporary master of the 
house than as a passing visitor. ‘Thus we find even Phari- 
sees receiving Christ into their homes, and making feasts for 
Him ; and if, at these feasts, sometimes the spirit of contro- 
versy broke out, it was usually subdued by the traditional 
sense of courtesy due to a guest. It would be an error to 
deduce from such a saying as “The foxes have holes, and 
the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not 
where to lay His head,” that the life of Christ, during His 
public ministry, was in any real sense an outcast life. He 
had, indeed, no secure and settled home, but He had many 
homes. We often find Him at the tables of persons of some 
social distinction; oftener still at the tables of those whose 
wealth attracted social odium; and it was one of the re- 
proaches brought against Him by the more austere, that He 
was too careless of His company, and that His progress 
was everywhere attended by joyous feasts and social gath- 
erings. But probably the houses of the poor knew most of 
Him. In the darkening eve He would draw near the door 
of some poor fisherman of the lake, or some artisan of Beth- 


164 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


saida or Magdala, and enter in, and join the family in the 
simple meal of bread and olives and rough country wine. 
He would gather the children round His knees and bless 
them, and use His matchless power of parable to sow the 
seeds of goodness in their tender hearts. Friends and neigh- 
bors would drop in, and form a wondering group around 
Him as He talked. The night sped on winged feet—ah! all 
too swiftly for these listeners who heard One speak “as 
never man spake.” Then came the evening prayer, the final 
blessing, the last lingering word of counsel or of comfort to 
some newly-won disciple; and on a score of memories there 
is inscribed an image and an idyll which is never more 
effaced. 

But the life of Christ reveals a yet more sacred kind of 
privacy. Hospitality, indeed, secured for Him a refuge from 
the pressure of the crowd, but there were times when He 
needed a refuge from man himself. This asylum of a deeper 
peace He found in Nature. However man may disapprove 
the theory of a cloistered life, yet the silence and seclusion 
of the cloister do represent a real need for all men of medi- 
tative mind. He who has no periods of silence soon finds 
himself unfitted for a life of public speech by mere paucity 
of ideas. For ideas only come to growth in silence. Or, if 
this judgment seem too severe, may we not say that ideas are 
like the flowers that would soon lose their perfume without 
the dews of night, and that meditation may be thus described 
as the renewing dew of thought? Especially is this true of 
the great mystic and poetic ideas through which in all ages 
religion has expressed itself. When Elijah found the real 
revelation of God in “a still, small voice,” he expressed the 
eternal truth that the world must be stilled around us before 
the sense of God is deeply felt. Christ constantly acted on 
this profound intuition. Whilé in no way encouraging the 


THE PRIVATE LIFE OF JESUS | 163 


ideal of a cloistered life, but rather rebuking it by the very 
nature of His own daily ministry, He did show in His ex- 
ample the need and use of meditation. When in Galilee He 
often sought the mountains that surround the lake, and re- 
joiced to be alone among them. When in Jerusalem the 
Mount of Olives was His leafy cloister, where, sometimes 
early in the morning, sometimes late at night, He retired to 
pray. Prayer and meditation were the daily rule of life for 
Him. When the end comes it finds Him praying in that 
very garden which had so often been the witness of His soli- 
tude, the shrine of His devoutest thought, and the altar of His 
supplications. 

The prayerfulness of Jesus is no doubt a mystery. It 
might be argued that no one needed the help of prayer so 
little, since He claimed to dwell in the very bosom of God. 
But such a conclusion arises from a total misconception of 
what prayer really means. Prayer, according to the defini- 
tion given to us by Christ, is not so much the asking for 
some definite good which we suppose we need, as the at- 
tempt to lift our souls into the Divine atmosphere. It is 
thus the language or the expression of the soul. Reason 
may suggest, and with admirable logic, that it is absurd to 
suppose that the entire predetermined course of human 
events should be set aside by the prayer of an individual, 
who is but an infinitesimal atom in the congregated life of 
man. Christ’s reply is that the use of prayer is not to de- 
flect the will of God for our own supposed good, but to rec- 
oncile ourselves to that will as the highest good. 


‘¢Whate’er is good to wish, wish that of heaven; 
But if for any wish thou dar’st not pray, 
Then pray to God to cast that wish away.” 


Piety might suggest, with a logic not less lucid, that if God 


166 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


does indeed know what is good for us, it is foolish to impor- 
tune Him for what He will not fail to give. But this con- 
ception reduces the universe to a mere bureaucratic govern- 
ment, whereas Christ regarded it as a household or a family. 
The child may be well assured of the settled benignity of his 
parent, but that child would be very sullen and unloyable 
who had no requests to make of the parent. The requests 
of the child, so constant and perhaps so unreasonable, are, 
nevertheless, so many expressions of faith and trust, and are 
the alphabet of the affections. So Christ took pains to 
teach, in two singular parables, that God loves to be impor- 
tuned by His children, even as a good parent does. The 
man who opens the door at midnight to his friend does so 
from no spirit of generosity, but simply to get rid of him. 
The unjust judge, who at last deals with the widow’s wrongs, 
does so from no sense either of sympathy or justice, but 
merely to escape her importunity. The meaning of Christ 
appears to be, that if men would devote the same energy of 
desire to spiritual good which they give to temporal they 
would find a response beyond all their hopes. Generosity 
or judgment wrung from the bad by importunity may seem 
an unsafe and doubtful analogue to apply to God; but it at 
least suggests that the Divine benignity when importuned 
will act with a superior readiness and grace, and that the 
value of importunity is the intensity which it communicates 
to the human spirit. “If ye being evil,” and therefore often 
grudging and ungenerous, “know how to give good gifts 
unto your children, how much more shall your Father in 
heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” 

But we are not left to parables, from which various and 
even opposite deductions may be drawn, to learn how Christ 
regarded prayer. St. Luke tells us that, “as He was pray- 
ing in a certain place, when He ceased one of His disciples 


Te INV ae eee) Beor its US ele 


said unto Him, Lord, teach us to pray.” The occasion was 
perhaps some quiet devotional meeting among the hills or 
olive-gardens, when the disciples listened with a sacred awe 
to the voice of Christ in prayer, and their uplifted hearts 
coveted so great a gift. Christ grants their request by fram- 
ing for them the noble form of supplication which we know 
as the “Lord’s Prayer.” He meant it as a model, and yet it 
may be said that no acknowledged model has ever been so 
generally neglected. We may at once justify the melancholy 
truth of this statement by comparing the clauses of this Di- 
vine prayer with the common human temper and modes of 
supplication. At the root of most prayer lies the old pagan 
conception of gods, either malevolent or careless, who have 
to be propitiated ; but this prayer commences with a note of 
joyous confidence in God, “Our Father, who art in heaven.”’ 
Human prayer most frequently applies itself to the request 
for some benefit apparently essential to the earthly life and 
present happiness. This prayer contains but one petition 
for an earthly good, and this boon the very least that can be 
asked, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Even among 
men of excellent virtues the act of prayer is usually dissoci- 
ated from any antecedent claim of character; but in this 
prayer character is made the antecedent of all true supplica- 
tion, for in asking the forgiveness of sin the claim is urged, 
“For we also forgive every one that 1s indebted to us.” 
Finally, if we divide the clauses of the Lord’s Prayer into 
eroups, we find that the first four clauses are passionate as- 
pirations, not for any human good but for the complete tri- 
umph of the Divine will in earth and heaven; the fifth alone 
touches on the temporal and earthly life; the three follow- 
ing petitions are for spiritual blessings only, the forgiveness 
of sin, and the victory over evil and temptation; and then 
the prayer closes with pure ascription and doxology, the 


168 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


soul soaring, as it were, beyond its own loftiest desires into the 
clear empyrean, from which God’s kingdom is seen as actual 
and eternal. Thus the Lord’s Prayer is something more than 
a model prayer ; it is a definition of the principles of prayer. 

The words in which St. Luke describes the occasion of its 
utterance admit another interpretation. “As He was pray- 
ing in a certain place” may very possibly refer not to a 
semi-public, but to a private act of prayer, in which Christ 
was surprised by His disciples. St. Luke seems to indicate 
that “the place” was in the neighborhood of Bethany ; per- 
haps some grove of palms attached to the house of Mary, or 
some retired spot on the adjacent slopes of Olivet. There 
the disciples came seeking Him, and saw Him kneeling, and 
stood in reverent silence at a distance, waiting till His act of 
devotion was accomplished. When they presently asked 
Him to teach them how to pray, the request was prompted 
not only by the sacred spectacle they had witnessed, but by 
a passionate curiosity as to the nature of Christ’s own prayer. 
For what had He besought Heaven in those silent supplica- 
tions? What words were on the lips that never spake save 
in accents that were new and beautiful to human ears? 
Christ’s reply is to repeat aloud the prayer that He has al- 
ready breathed in silence. It is thus that He Himself 
prayed, in a series of profound wishes, through which the 
human will seeks to merge and lose itself in the Divine Will. 
One clause alone may have been interpolated as an accom- 
modation to a human frailty He never felt—the petition for 
the forgiveness of sins. But in all other respects the prayer 
may in truth be the Lord’s own Prayer—the sacred litany 
of a soul in all things obedient to the will of His Father, 
often uttered in those private hours when at morn or eve He 
found His oratory in the palm groves of Bethphage or among 
the silent hills of Galilee. 


ie bork VAM Teno JS US) 4-169 


Such was the private life of Jesus. The loneliness of the 
mystic’s mind, which turns as by the instinct of the cage- 
less bird to the solitudes of Nature, is counterbalanced in 
Christ by the genial affections of the man. From those pro- 
found and constant meditations, in which yeil after veil 
seemed lifted from the universe, until the human and 
Divine spirit met indissolubly, and found themselves one, 
Christ returned to the beaten roads of human life, not with a 
lessened but a quickened interest in man. The higher He 
soared above average humanity the more eager was He that 
humanity should accompany Him in His flight. If the in- 
effectual strength of man is ever to essay that great experi- 
ment, it can only be by the same means. Certainly that 
experiment will never be achieved by mysticism alone, for 
the inevitable effect of mysticism is to produce aloofness 
from the world, and to attenuate almost to nothingness the 
bonds that hold men to a life of social intercourse. There- 
fore the friendships of Christ’s private life have a spiritual 
as well as a human significance. The love of God ought 
never to exclude the love of man. The private life of Christ 
reveals each in equal perfection, and the one as perpetually 
interfused with the other. The true motto of such a 
life may perhaps be best found in the familiar verse of 
Coleridge— 


‘He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small, 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all.” 


CHAPTER XIII 
THE FALLING OF THE SHADOW 


THE presence of John’s disciples at the feast which 
Matthew the publican made in Capernaum once more intro- 
duces to our history, and for the last time, the name of 
John. It is little wonder that these men, who subsisted in a 
constant state of hunger, looked on the prodigal profusion 
of Matthew’s feast with astonishment and perplexity. Fast- 
ing, always a feature of Jewish religious practice, they had 
carried to unheard-of lengths. Among the stricter Jews it 
was no uncommon thing to devote two whole days in every 
week to a total abstinence from food. These were public 
fasts ; but the religious devotee, devoured by his passion for 
austerity, added a general rigor of life which forbade any 
concession to appetite, beyond such as was absolutely need- 
ful to existence itself. These half-starved fanatics of the 
desert might well marvel at a kind of life which was a per- 
petual marriage-feast. Their thoughts turned with angry 
sympathy to their great leader, already deserted by the pop- 
ulace, and reduced once more to “a voice crying in the 
wilderness.” Gloom was fast settling upon that strenuous 
and noble mind. The first enthusiasm of John’s successful 
propaganda had already waned, and his words had been ful- 
filled; he had decreased as Jesus had increased. ‘There 
was preparing a great tragedy, fatal to himself, and of deci- 
sive influence on the life of Christ. We may trace the first 
falling of the shadow on the mind of Christ to that hour 
when the news reached Him of the death of John. 

170 


SE DIU UN GO he Te SEAT OWS VEL 


He who stands upon the summit of the Mount of Olives 
sees to the eastward a prospect full of grandeur and sterility. 
Immediately in the foreground is a bare and dreadful coun- 
try, falling rapidly to those gloomy gorges where Elijah 
found a refuge, and broken by a single green oasis, the palm 
eroves and balsam gardens of Jericho. Rising above the 
landscape are the mountains of Moab, deeply fissured and 
wonderfully colored with a hundred hues of pink and car- 
mine, melting into deepest purple. They form a vast bastion 
above the waters of the Dead Sea, which is as an amethyst 
enclosed in a setting of coral. Northward les the Jordan 
valley, in which the sacred river can be traced, less by the 
gleam of silver in its windings than by the broad band of 
green that marks its course. It was to the eastward of the 
Jordan, close to its juncture with the Dead Sea, at a place 
called Anon, the site of which is lost, that John conducted 
the last acts of his public ministry. What happened to 
bring his ministry to a sudden close we cannot ascertain. 
It is certain, however, that he incurred the anger of Herod 
Antipas, or his suspicious curiosity, which was not less for- 
midable. Perhaps some strong words of John, uttered to the 
multitude, were reported to the tyrant, whose spies were 
everywhere. Herod at this time was residing in the vast 
fortress of Macherus, which stands at a height of nearly 
four thousand feet above the Dead Sea. In the heart of this 
enormous fortress and arsenal he had built himself a stately 
palace, in which he imitated not merely the luxuries but the 
infamies of the most corrupt of Roman emperors. To this 
prison-palace John was brought. In its secret dungeons the 
final act of his heroic life was consummated. 

The story of the Herods is of great importance in the long 
drama of Jewish history. Herod the Great, the founder of 
the race, in some respects deserved his fame. It was he who 


172 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


built the Temple, transforming what was little more than a 
provincial sanctuary into the most splendid of religious edi- 
fices. For six-and-forty years vast regiments of workmen, 
under the guidance of a thousand priests, toiled to raise a 
building more magnificent than Solomon had ever dreamed 
of, rich with every kind of precious stone, roofed with gold, 
adorned with countless colonnades and _ porticos, vast 
enough for ceremonies which attracted all nations, and beau- 
tiful enough to become the envy of the world. It is scarcely 
an exaggeration to say that not even the greatest buildings 
of antiquity, the Acropolis in its severe perfection, or Nero’s 
Golden House in its most fantastic splendor, ever equalled 
this prodigious monument raised by the genius of the Idu- 
mean prince. But, so far as Herod was concerned, the 
Temple was a monument not of piety but of policy and 
pride. At heart he cared nothing for religion. He system- 
atically browbeat and insulted the priests. He changed the 
priesthood at will, and once proclaimed a youth of seventeen 
High Priest. Those who saw the national religion suddenly 
emerge into the magnificence of world-wide fame; who wan- 
dered through that maze of marble with astonished eyes; 
who heard the silver trumpets of the priests call to prayer, 
even as the muezzin calls to-day from the Mosque of Omar 
—sole and alien relic standing on the enormous site where 
Herod’s Temple once rose vast and arrogant; those, in fact, 
for whom all these glories were prepared, felt them to be an 
insult and a sarcasm. ‘They had no grateful thoughts of 
Herod. ‘They knew him to be ostentatious, cruel, vengeful, 
superstitious, dissolute, and unscrupulous. He was stained 
with the blood of a hundred murders. He knew neither 
shame nor pity when his passions were aroused. His life 
was full of guilty intrigues, culminating ever and again in 
acts of turpitude which even the base abhorred. As if to 


ee A ING ORS LA eon aDOW 173 


show his irony, he had built close to the Temple itself thea- 
tres and amphitheatres, which to the Jews appeared mon- 
strous sinks of all iniquity. When Christ spoke in frank 
depreciation of the Temple perhaps He remembered who 
had built it, and His words should scarcely have surprised 
or offended men who in their hearts had cursed the name of 
Herod many times, knowing full well what little cause they 
had to be proud of a Temple built by an insolent usurper 
who had trampled the priesthood in the mire, a tyrant 
who had stained himself with the blood of the just and 
good. 

The vices of Herod the Great were reproduced in Herod 
Antipas, but they were unaccompanied by any genius or 
strength of character. He performed with meanness and 
calculation the kind of crimes to which Herod the Great had 
lent the glamor of arrogance and daring. It may not be true 
that “vice loses half its stain” when allied with great man- 
ners, or with the defiant scorn of some “ archangel ruined ” ; 
but it is at least true that the vices of the coward are doubly 
odious. Herod Antipas was in all things a coward. He 
preferred the stealth of the assassin to the boldness of the 
open foe. He bribed and cajoled where the founder of his 
race would have beaten his antagonist with many stripes. 
With a hatred of the Jews not less deadly than that of any 
of his race, he feared the people. Thus we find that his con- 
duct to John, like his conduct to Christ at a later date, unites 
the two worst features of all that man counts most detestable 
——timidity and cruelty. Like all his race he was the play- 
thing of his passions. Even among the most degenerate 
Romans of the days of Nero it would be hard to parallel the 
profligacies of these _Idumeans. They had carried intermar- 
riage to such a point that all the ordinary demarcations of 
decorum were effaced. Chastity, loyalty, and good faith were 


174 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


terms unknown to them. Disreputable escapades, adulteries, 
divorces, incestuous alliances characterized their life among 
themselves. The scandal of these things had come to its 
height during the days when John baptized at Aunon. Philip, 
the brother of Antipas, at one time destined to the tetrarchy, 
had been disinherited, and lived at Rome as a private citizen, 
to the intolerable chagrin of Herodias, his wife. While upon 
a visit to his brother, Antipas had submitted to the intrigues 
of Herodias, and had ended by carrying her off. He had 
married her, not even taking the trouble to divorce his wife. 
She was his niece as well as his sister-in-law. She returned 
with him to Judea, claiming full queenly honors from a race 
who could not but regard her as doubly an adulteress. Per- 
haps in these open conferences beside the Jordan some one 
asked John’s opinion of this scandal; but at all events John 
was not the man to conceal his opinions. What less could 
he do, whose whole life was dedicated to a great reform of 
manners, than denounce one whose lust and perfidy were the 
talk of every tongue? Under pretence of hearing John for 
himself the stealthy Idumean invited John to visit him, and 
the request was a command. At the close of some long day 
of teaching we see John, in the midst of armed men, riding 
slowly from the fords of Jordan up the wild defiles that led 
to Macherus. From that prison-palace he is destined to 
emerge alive no more. 

Nevertheless it would seem that for a time Herod treated 
his prisoner with respect and even deference. ‘The main ob- 
ject of Herod was achieved in the summary suppression of 
John’s public ministry. Beside the Jordan, preaching to ex- 
cited crowds, John’s influence was a menace and perhaps a 
danger to the power of Herod. Hence it was a stroke of po- 
litical astuteness to arrest him. But Herod had no wish to 
act harshly by his captive. He treated him as a person of 


EE RA INGAOPY Die SrA DOW iL 


distinction ; and in the case of one whose power over popu- 
lar thought was still very great, good manners became also 
good policy. He was even curious to understand the nature 
of John’s message, and it says much for the force of John’s 
character that he had little difficulty in establishing a com- 
plete ascendancy over the mind of his captor. Herod kept 
John beside him, says St. Mark, rather as a prisoner on pa- 
role than as a criminal, “and when he heard him he did 
many things, and heard him gladly.” It is difficult to imag- 
ine what sort of pleasure Herod found in John’s society, ex- 
cept the barren pleasure of curiosity. But the implication 
of St. Mark’s words is that Herod did actually for a time ac- 
cept John as a kind of spiritual director. He heard John 
gladly for his eloquence, he executed some external reforma- 
tions in the manners of his court, he even felt sincere appre- 
ciation of his prisoner’s character. But on one point he was 
obdurate ; he would permit no interference with his adulter- 
ous and half-incestuous marriage. Yet that was the one 
point on which John was bound to speak. He had already 
spoken in language that could neither be retracted nor for- 
gotten. Night after night when the revelries of the court 
were at an end, and silence had fallen on the vast and gloomy 
fortress, Herod would send for his great prisoner, would pro- 
fess himself eager to discuss a hundred points of speculative 
truth, would even listen with a kind of cringing awe to John’s 
lofty moral teachings; but always in the end the conversa- 
tion broke upon a single sentence, “It is not lawful for thee 
to have her.” And so Herod came to see at last that his 
quarrel with John was more deadly than it seemed ; that it 
could not be healed by cajoleries and flatteries ; that it was 
the old irreconcilable dispute, the eternal conflict between 
vice and virtue. 

During the early part of his captivity John still exercised 


176 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the functions of the leader of a party. His disciples were 
still with him, and he was able to direct their movements. 
But in spite of Herod’s lenience he must have known himself 
from the first a doomed man. Day by day, as he gazed from 
this craggy height of Macherus over the widespread pros- 
pect of the Judean desert, with Jerusalem and the hills of 
Hebron to the south, the Jordan valley and the green palm 
groves of Jericho to the north—scenes familiar to him from 
his boyhood, and made doubly dear to him by the toils and 
triumphs of his ministry—the conviction grew upon him that 
he would tread these scenes no more. A cloud of despond- 
ence settled on his mind. It seemed to him that he had lived 
in vain; perhaps at times he was ready to say with a later 
sage that men were not worth the trouble he had taken over 
them. His disciples themselves could not conceal their sad- 
ness and perplexity. Some remained disconsolate beside the 
fords of Jordan, others had wandered into Galilee; all were 
dejected. In these dreary days even John’s faith was par- 
tially eclipsed. The news that came to him of Christ’s joy- 
ous progress in Galilee filled him with alarm and doubt. 
Had he been mistaken after all in recognizing Jesus as the 
long-desired Messiah? ‘The most acute pain that John ever 
knew was tasted in the pang of such a question. He sent a 
deputation to Jesus, asking, “ Art Thou He that should come, 
or look we for another?” The answer he received should 
have assured him that the convivial feasts in Galilee which 
had so offended his disciples were by no means the chief 
feature of the new ministry which had filled Galilee with an 
intoxicating joy. “Go,” said Jesus, “and show John again 
those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive 
their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and 
the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the 
gospel preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall 


Dele Naw re PPT SEPA DOW) 177 


not be offended in Me.” The message no doubt reached 
John, but there is no record of how it was received. One 
would like to think that John died with a recovered faith in 
Him whom he had called the Lamb of God, but there is 
nothing to suggest it. When darkness settles on a great 
mind it is usually impenetrable. From the lonely height of 
Herod’s fortress John believed himself to be looking on the 
battlefield of a lost cause. Perhaps in the sadness of these 
gloomy sunsets he came to sigh for death, and his last thought 
was the thought of Elijah: “It is enough: now, O Lord, 
take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” 
The Angel of Death did not long resist John’s impor- 
tunity. The winter wore away in Macherus, the spring 
came, and with it the anniversary of the death of Herod the 
Great, and of the succession of Antipas to the tetrarchy. 
This was the opportunity of Antipas to arrange a great feast. 
Herodias was present at the feast, with Salome, her daugh- 
ter by the husband whom she had disgraced and forsaken. 
Whatever lenience John had won from Herod, it is certain 
that Herodias hated him. Perhaps this very lenience had 
been a frequent subject of dispute between them, for Herod- 
ias, free from all compunction in her vices, would despise 
Herod for the weakness that even dallied with good while 
it held fast by evil. In any case John’s bold rebuke was an 
affront offered less to Herod than to her. The dishonored 
woman never pardons a reference to her dishonor. In pro- 
portion to her knowledge of her sin is the frantic desire to 
have it treated as though it had not been. Thus the world 
has seen again and again the strange spectacle of women who 
persuade themselves that their vice does not exist because it 
is unremarked. If Herodias had ever seen John, which it is 
nearly certain that she must have done, she had read in his 
very face the uncontrolled abhorrence which he felt for her ; 
12 


178 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


and his frequent interviews with her paramour were a source 
of alarm as well as insult. But now her chance of vengeance 
had arrived. In the wild excess with which the banquet 
ended, it was suggested that Salome should execute one of 
those grossly pantomimic dances usually left to courtesans 
and the paid servants of corruption. Salome proved herself 
a fit daughter of such a mother. She was the descendant of 
priests and princes; she was to become a queen; but she 
had no scruple in violating her modesty to serve the purpose 
of the vilest intrigue. Tor, from first to last, the account of 
what happened bears the aspect of deliberate intrigue. Be- 
fore the first movement of the dance was made the price was 
settled between mother and daughter, and in their hands 
Herod was but a green withe. They knew what to expect. 
The half-intoxicated king, soon stung to madness by the 
libertinism of the hour, exclaimed with an oath that the de- 
eraded girl should receive any reward she chose to ask. 
The instant response was, “Give me the head of John the 
Baptist.” Sobered now, and conscious of the pit of infamy 
into which he had plunged, the king would have disputed the 
request; but it was too late. A stronger man might have 
set aside his oath, counting it better kept in the breach than 
the observance; but strength was not to be expected from 
Herod. Reluctantly he gave the sign. Beneath the sacred 
Paschal moonlight, in the courtyard of the prison, John 
bowed his neck to the sword of the Roman soldier. The 
horror of the scene was consummated when the blood- 
stained head was brought in upon a dish, and given to 
Salome, who promptly laid it at her mother’s feet. 

It is some satisfaction to those who still retain amid all 
discouragements a faith in the inherent justice of things to 
know that Herod never shook himself free from the horrors 
of this night. The ghost of John haunted him. When the 


ei ee LINGO) DP bre Shia OME. 7g 


news of Christ’s ministry in Galilee came to him he exclaims 
in terror, “It is John whom I beheaded.” The guilty 
woman, for whose sake he slew a prophet, became his 
Nemesis. From that day defeat and ruin dogged his foot- 
steps. A detestation of his deed, which knew no reconcile- 
ment, spread through all the land. The town and fortress 
where John had died became a place abhorred. And still 
amid its ruins, where not one stone is left upon another, the 
solitary traveler thinks he hears the dying cry of John, and 
the wail of the tortured ghost of Herod, crying in vain for 
“all the perfumes of Arabia,” to cleanse the bloodstained 
hands. 

The effect of this tragedy upon the mind of Christ was 
very great. Overwhelmed and saddened, He at once retired 
into a desert place for prayer and meditation. ‘The second 
year of His ministry was now drawing to aclose. Hitherto, 
in spite of controversy and dispute, His course had been 
happy and successful. A new world, full of amity, benevo- 
lence, and peace, seemed actually to have sprung up at His 
word. The entire regeneration of society by means of truth 
and charity seemed possible. The world, equally with Him- 
self, seemed enamored of this dream of a reconstructed social 
system, a golden age. How could it be that man by his per- 
versity should ever bring himself to reject prospects so en- 
chanting? It seemed a thing impossible. But in these days 
of grief and solitude a more sombre truth revealed itself. 
The mask was torn away, and the deep malevolence of human 
nature confronted Him whose faith in human nature had 
hitherto been so great. It was not by words, but by blood 
alone that mankind could be healed. Yor the first time the 
certainty of His own martyrdom became impressed upon 
His mind. Henceforth He speaks much of the Cross, and 
draws pictures, intolerably painful to His friends, of the 


180 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


things that the Son of Man shall suffer at the hands of evil 
men. He proclaims that that man is unfitted to reform 
society who is not prepared to die for it. The true reformer 
is not baptized to his work, save by the baptism of his own 
blood. It is an agonizing moment when this severe truth is 
first perceived, because it implies that the highest qualities 
of benevolence are in themselves impotent to turn the course 
of human nature. But Jesus learned that truth thoroughly 
in the desert where He meditated on the death of John. 
Henceforth He speaks as one for whom a violent death is 
reserved and predetermined. | 
The death of John indirectly provoked a spirit of violence 
against Christ Himself. ‘The pastime of making martyrs has 
in all ages proved contagious, perhaps upon the principle 
that the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. 
A great personal popularity is composed of many elements, 
but the most important is the general conviction that it is 
impregnable. If once this conviction is challenged a bold 
malice may readily contrive a blow so shrewd that hence- 
forth a road is left open for the pernicious energy of every 
malcontent. Popularity depends on reputation, reputation 
on opinion, and opinion on imagination. The death of John 
not only shocked the popular imagination: it disturbed 
opinion. Men saw that in spite of Herod’s fear of the peo- 
ple he had dared to ignore and flout them in killing their 
hero, and behold nothing had happened. There had been 
no revolt, no national protest even; the news had been re- 
ceived in silence. Who could have thought that he who, 
but two years before, had seemed the arbiter of a nation’s 
destiny, could be so easily annihilated? And if John, why 
not Jesus? From that hour there grew in many minds the 
dangerous thought that Jesus might be easily overthrown 
when the hour was ripe, and that no popularity could save 


LA ed IN GAD Eh Pie ery TF) OWA SL 


Him from an assault planned with skill and executed with 
sufficient promptitude and boldness. 

For John himself we need not lament. What better fate 
can happen to a hero than to leave the stage of action in the 
moment when his work is done? ‘The most tragic page in 
the life of many a man of genius has been that which tells 
the melancholy history of waning influence, gradual deser- 
tion, superseded methods and ideas, and unwilling resigna- 
tion to a new spirit of the time. The magnanimity of mind 
which had at first frankly recognized the superiority of 
Jesus might not always have endured the strain of a situa- 
tion fruitful in elements of popular humiliation. Had John 
lived he might have found himself forced into hostility to 
Christ, or at least into that mean and odious rivalry which 
was manifest in his disciples. He might have more and 
more misjudged a message and a ministry so utterly at 
variance with his own. The price of any act of supreme 
self-abnegation is great, but it is less onerous if it can be 
paid at once, in one full tribute. It is when the price is 
wrung out drop by drop, through years of suffering, that the 
noblest heart may fail of worthiness. From this intolerable 
ordeal John was saved. He left the world before the corro- 
sion of defeat had time to leave a stain upon his spirit. He 
bequeathed to men an example of unique magnanimity, per- 
fect virtue, and matchless fortitude. Well might Jesus, who 
Himself pronounced his elegy, exclaim that among them 
that are born of women there had not risen a greater than 
John the Baptist. 

The entire relations between John and Jesus afford a 
noble exposition of the art of friendship. There is both 
truth and beauty in a certain famous anecdote of two great 
men who loved each other, “and agreed in everything but 
their opinions ;” for friendship is based not on coincidence 


182 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of opinion, but on moral appreciation. If the friendship 
between John and Jesus rose superior to all jealousy and 
acrimonious dispute, it was because it was thus based upon 
moral appreciation. John might misread the ministry of 
Jesus, but never the Divine beauty of His character. And 
doubtless also there came to him the solemn and tranquil- 
lizing thought that before very long they would be reunited 
in death, and would be inheritors of the same eternal peace. 
He who is subdued by such a thought will often ask himself 
whether any kind of opinion is worth a single angry word ? 
He will put a check upon his tongue, feeling how poor and 
mean are all disputes when confronted with the immense 
and catholic reconcilements of the grave. The best achieve- 
ment of the life of John was not in any influence he had 
wielded, any task that he had done; it was that he had been 
the Friend of Jesus, and had kept the chivalry and faith of 
friendship perfect to the last. 


CHAPTER XIV 
A GREAT CRISIS 


THE certainty of death either stupefies or invigorates the 
human mind. He whose days are numbered will either shut 
himself up in the seclusion of a bitter melancholy, or apply 
his heart to the great wisdom of using the time that is left 
to a loftier purpose. To the honor of human nature it may 
be said that the certainty of death more frequently invigor- 
ates than stupefies. In the really great mind it produces 
the sense of infinite tranquillity. The worst is known, and 
henceforth terror is disarmed. The bitterness of death is 
past, not in the pang of dying, but in its contemplation. 
The hero who falters on his trial, and is torn by a hundred 
fears, rarely fails to recover his composure when his con- 
demnation is achieved. In His retirement to the wilderness 
after the death of John Jesus knew His real Gethsemane. 
There the true tears of blood were shed, and the law of sac- 
rifice accepted. He returns to His ministry with the glow 
of this mystic ardor of sacrifice upon Him. Henceforth His 
speech strikes bolder notes: knowing the worst that man 
can do, and not fearing it, He counts the world a conquered 
foe; and in all His actions there is a certain tenderness of 
farewell, and a Divine composure, which pierce His disciples 
to the heart, and at times make them afraid of Him. 

From the time of John’s death we find the enemies of 
Christ growing bolder. Hitherto they had been sullen and 
suspicious rather than actively vindictive ; now, for the first 
time, there are signs of organized and relentless opposition. 

183 


184 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Let us recount who these enemies of Jesus were. First, 
both in number and influence stood the Pharisees. It is un- 
just to describe the Pharisees in terms of entire contempt, 
because some of the best as well as the worst of men, were 
Pharisees. Nicodemus was a Pharisee; so also was Saul 
of Tarsus; and it has even been claimed that some of the 
members of Christ's own family were Pharisees. The Phar- 
isee, if he could have separated himself from the belittling 
influence of a narrow view of life, would have deserved the 
gratitude of the world, for he believed with intensity in the 
moral government of God. But he interpreted that govern- 
ment entirely in his own favor. He regarded the mass of 
his own nation much as a proud Brahmin regards persons 
of a lower caste. The implicit speech ever on his tongue 
was, “Stand thou aside, I am holier than thou!” He was 
above all things a zealot. He stood for the least jot and 
tittle of the law. He wasted his life in acquiring a kind of 
learning which really rendered him absurd. His contempt 
for any foreign culture, and indeed for all new ideas, was 
rancorous in the extreme. In a word, he was a violent 
reactionary of the irreconcilable type, who had nourished in 
himself, as a kind of virtue, the temper that creates inquisi- 
tions, and for a word will break men on the wheel. 

The Pharisees included all kinds of people; they were, in 
fact, a society or confraternity eager to obtain adherents who 
would propagate their views. ‘The Sadducees, on the other 
hand, were aristocrats. Theirs was a community of blood 
rather than belief. Their faith in any kind of Divine goy- 
ernment was very weak. ‘They rejected the doctrine of a 
future hfe. They were rich, and were content to live the 
present life in epicurean fashion. They were content with 
the Roman domination and astute enough to turn it to their 
own advantage. They despised all fervor and enthusiasm 


A GREAT CRISIS 185 


much as the churchmen of the eighteenth century did. The 
question of Messiahship did not interest them; they had 
long since relegated it to the limbo of inscrutable conun- 
drums. One may ask, What quarrel then could such men 
have with Jesus? They quarreled with Him not as a Mes- 
siah, but as a reformer, and the spokesman of the poor. 
Mere “views” on speculative truth they could afford to treat 
with scorn; but their supercilious disdain broke down before 
doctrines that sowed the seeds of social revolution. It may 
be interpreted either to their favor or their disfavor that they 
took no active part in the conspiracy against the life of 
Christ. They had not enough belief in any truth, or any 
seeming truth, to persecute an error. But not the less they 
wished Christ ill, and were well pleased to see others do the 
work which they were too indifferent or too proud to do 
themselves. 

To these powerful parties were added three others. The 
Herodians represented the astute worldly policy of Herod, 
and perhaps his lax views of conduct. “Beware of the 
leaven of Herod” said Jesus, thus challenging their enmity. 
The Herodians, in so far as they had any definite programme, 
sought to Romanize completely Jewish life and thought. 
They were politicians, who desired before all things to stand 
well with the ruling power. The scribes and lawyers so 
often mentioned in the controversies of Christ, constituted a 
professional class of great influence. The scribes were re- 
sponsible for the preservation of the national literature, doc- 
tors and professors of theology, who in an intensely religious 
nation soon acquired great authority. The lawyer was, as 
the term implies, a professor of Jewish jurisprudence ; but 
as that jurisprudence was founded on religious sanctions he 
was also deeply learned in theology. If no sweeping con- 
demnation can be passed upon the Pharisees, neither can it 


186 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


on the scribes and lawyers, and for the same reason. They 
included both good and bad men; the thoughtful student, 
the bitter pedant, the unscrupulous practitioner. It was to 
a man, who is described by one Evangelist as a scribe, by 
another as a lawyer, that Jesus said, “Thou art not far from 
the kingdom of God.” But it is easy to see that this class 
as a whole would have good ground for making common 
cause against Jesus. They could not but feel the prejudice 
of learning against an untaught Galilean; they could not 
but regard His whole mission as presumptuous in the ex- 
treme. The success of that mission was a menace to their 
authority and privileges. They formed a corporation or 
trades union of formidable power. It would have been con- 
trary to human nature if such men had not indulged in that 
acrimony of feeling, that tendency to aspersion and contemp- 
tuous criticism, which the authorized practitioner always 
feels toward the unauthorized even in the most indulgent 
systems of society. 

But we may take much wider ground than this. No one 
ever studies Jewish history without feeling that the Jew is 
the great enigma of creation. An innate perversity of na- 
ture, driving him at times by what seems an ineluctable de- 
cree to the wildest excesses of fanaticism and folly, is the 
one outstanding characteristic of this strange creature of 
which we may be sure. A sort of insane genius at times 
rules his conduct, compelling in almost equal degrees won- 
der and disgust. He is impracticable, childish, absurd, and 
yet at the same time capable of the loftiest thoughts and 
deeds. Of that masculine and sober judgment which knows 
how to govern well, and so to build up national power, he 
shows no trace. We see him wearing out by complaint and 
importunity all who have ever tried to govern him, until we 
share the exasperation he never fails to create; and then he 


An, GRAS GRITS LS 187 


suddenly compels our admiration by the heroic stoicism with 
which he endures the fearful martyrdoms which he, and no 
other, has brought upon his race. He knows not how to 
avert these calamities; they appear to be his fate. With 
the most righteous cause to plead, he either pleads it at the 
wrong time or in the wrong way, so that redress is made im- 
possible. He is humble when boldness is required, astute 
when plain speech alone can serve him, subtle when the 
hour for subtlety has passed. There is something barbar- 
ous in him, some strain of the Egyptian brickfield, which 
has never been eliminated. Gentle, humble, almost cringing 
as he may appear, yet the embers of the deadliest rage burn 
in him, and they are easily fanned into a flame. And it is 
over questions of speculative truth or falsehood that his rage 
burns hottest. Political subjection he can bear, but an in- 
sult to some cherished theological idea exasperates him into 
madness. Indignities and bitter insults leave him unmoved ; 
but hidden in that strange heart, which no one has ever yet 
explored, are sublime ideas, and even pedantries, for which 
he will shed his blood or exterminate his brethren. The 
contradictions of his character are infinite; who shall meas- 
ure either the nature of his love or his antipathies? One 
thing only is seen with clearness by the student of the life 
of Christ: it is that Christ never had a chance with such a 
nation. It was impossible they should receive Him. He 
was an offence to them in all His thoughts, His words, 
His acts. He stands so utterly opposed to Jewish life that 
it is painful even to think of Jesus as a Jew. 

For the worst of these characteristics the Temple was re- 
sponsible. The race that had produced a David, a Solomon, 
an Isaiah, that even in the days of Christ could boast a 
Hillel, full of gentleness and charity, and the model of all 
that a sage should be, must have had some great qualities 


188 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of mind and heart. It had, and we see these finer qualities 
reappearing in the ardor and simplicity of characters like 
John’s and Peter’s. But it was the Jerusalem Jew who 
really ruled the nation. It was he who was narrow, bitter, 
intolerant, and impermeable to new ideas. ‘The Temple, 
which overshadowed all the city, also overshadowed all the 
nation. It was the centre of just that kind of fanaticism 
which is encouraged in the mosques of Mohammed, and in its 
method of subtle intrigue and espionage it recalls the secret 
chambers of the Inquisition. If we may anticipate the 
course of history, we may recollect that it was not until the 
Temple was finally destroyed that Christianity found room 
to spread its roots. But in the days of Christ the Temple 
was supreme, and its destruction seemed impossible. Here 
all the bigotry and obstinate perversity of Jewish character 
were entrenched. ‘The scribes and doctors of the law who 
dogged the steps of Christ throughout His Galilean ministry 
had received their training in its courts, and had taken the 
mandate of espionage from its officials. And so, as we now 
follow the controversies which fill the latter days of Christ, 
we see perpetually that behind them all the influences of the 
Temple are at work. These men pester Him with questions, 
try to entrap Him in His talk, and work out His downfall 
with a stealthy and indefatigable hatred. Blind to all that 
is admirable in His teaching, blinder still to all the beauty 
of His character, bigots by nature, spies by choice, incapable 
of real argument, insensible to either truth or reason, these 
Temple Jews sow the seeds of dissension wherever they are 
found, and make it the business of their lives to contrive His 
defamation and His death. 

What were those controversies? The first was one to 
which ample reference has been already made—the contro- 
versy over ritual and tradition. It was no new controversy ; 


AY GREACD vORISTS 189 


it had been conducted for many centuries by the noblest and 
most enlightened of Hebrew minds. Had not the greatest 
of all Hebrew prophets declared in words which held the 
true germ of Christianity itself, that God was weary of the 
multitude of sacrifices and burnt offerings? “Bring no more 
vain oblations, incense is an abomination unto Me; the new 
moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away 
with: it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting; your new 
moons and your appointed feasts My soul hateth.” Had 
not one of the best of Hebrew kings broken the brazen ser- 
pent of Moses, when he found it was an object of supersti- 
tious reverence, and said with scorn, “It is Nehustan—a 
piece of brass”? But in spite of the noble iconoclasm of 
Hezekiah, and the spiritual testament of Isaiah, ritual and 
tradition remained the idols of the Jewish mind. Respect 
for tradition, and the minute observance of ritual, everywhere 
passed for piety. In vain had the Sermon on the Mount 
been preached ; it had enlightened none but a few simple 
Galileans. In vain had a hundred great teachings on con- 
duct been uttered; orthodoxy was still considered of more 
value than virtue. Christ saw clearly that it was by such 
perversions of the spirit that nations perish. When He re- 
turned from His retreat it was to preach with yet more 
clamant emphasis the gospel of Isaiah. “Well did Esaias 
prophesy of you,” He cried, “This people draw nigh unto 
Me with their mouth, and honoreth Me with their lips, but 
their heart is far from Me.” It was not by the washing of 
hands, but by the cleansing of the heart that men pleased 
God. It was the heart that harbored all these evil passions 
from which murders, adulteries, and fornications spring. 
And then followed one of those epigrams upon the Pharisees 
which could be neither forgiven nor forgotten: What are 
they, He cried, but “blind leaders of the blind? And if the 


190 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


blind lead the blind they shall both fall into the ditch!” It 
is not surprising that the Pharisees were “ offended” when 
they heard this saying. It struck at the root of all that 
pedantic formalism which they had created in place of relig- 
ion, and it covered them with ridicule. Henceforth this 
controversy is to wax more and more acute, till in the heat 
of His indignation Christ exclaims, “Woe unto ye scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites! Ye serpents, ye generation of 
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Here is 
surely the very voice of the slain Forerunner; not in vain 
had Jesus meditated on the death of John, for He comes 
back from His retirement to utter in words of flame the very 
declamations of the Baptist. 

From this controversy there naturally sprang another upon 
Christ's own freedom of life. Here the hatred of the zealot 
for what seemed laxity, of the conventionally respectable for 
what seemed disreputable, of the orthodox formalist for what 
seemed heresy, mingled in a common focus of vengeful dis- 
eust. What could be thought of one who treated the Sab- 
bath, that tyrannous fetish of Jewish piety, with the freedom 
of a pagan and freethinker? How could the Jew, suppliant 
in the stiil narrower fetish-worship of respectability, bring 
himself to think without anger of the kind of persons with 
whom Christ deliberately associated? What could the 
orthodox formalist think of one who disregarded all cere- 
monial acts, even the washing of hands before meat, as 
though He sought to give offence, and to pour ridicule on 
the scruples which good men held sacred? ‘To an enlight- 
ened mind these questions appear trivial, but they are not 
trivial in narrow pietistic societies. The Pilgrim Fathers, 
and the straiter sects of Puritans, afford us relatively modern 
examples of the kind of scruples which may render life in- 
tolerable to a man of unconventional habits. It is no un- 


A GREAT CRISIS 191 


usual thing even in our time to find offences against decorum 
treated with a harsher punishment than offences against 
virtue. Jesus offended the etiquette of Judaism at every 
point. The Sabbath law He disregarded, and when chal- 
lenged replied with irony, referring His antagonists to the 
example of David who ate the shew-bread, or to the casuis- 
tries—in this case merciful—which they used to justify the 
rescue on the Sabbath-day of the ass which had fallen into 
the pit. He defended His association with the poor and dis- 
reputable on the most offensive of all grounds, that they 
were more disposed to good than the respectable ; the harlots 
and publicans entered into the Kingdom of God, while the 
children of the Kingdom were cast out. The stricter Phari- 
see sanctimoniously turned his face to the wall to avoid the 
very sight of a woman; Jesus was surrounded with women, 
some of whom had borne indifferent characters. All classes 
of society avoided the publican lke a plague; Jesus had 
even made a publican one of His disciples. Jewish life was 
lived in a sort of social seraglio, with a hundred devices to 
prevent all contact with the world; Christ lived in the open 
air, met all men freely, and took life in gladness of heart. 
Here were disparities indeed, and they were irreconcilable. 
These were serious offences, calculated to arouse a host of 
foes; but a far more serious offence was Christ’s virtual 
abrogation of the law of Moses. The various statements of 
Christ about the Mosaic law appear contradictory. At one 
time He declares He has not come to destroy the law but to 
fulfil it; at another time He opposes to the great authority 
of Moses His own yet greater authority: “But I say.” 
The explanation lies in the rapid expansion of Christ’s spir- 
itual ideas, and in His increasing consciousness of His own 
relation to God as a Son. He could not be wholly hostile to 
a religious system which marked a most important stage in 


192 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the spiritual evolution of mankind. But His ministry has 
gone but a very little way before He perceives that the law 
of Moses is incommensurate with His expanding spiritual 
ideas. He who had so soon climbed beyond the Baptist on 
those heavenly steeps which command the widening vision 
of truth, finds Himself before long at an altitude from which 
Moses himself seems dwarfed. He is looking down upon a 
finished and outdated economy, and He begins to speak with 
the accent of superiority. An instance of this temper is af- 
forded us in the series of events which followed immediately 
upon the death of John. It was undoubtedly at this time 
that Christ fed the multitude, but astonishing as the story is, 
it is less astonishing than the discourse which He bases on 
it. It was natural that the Jewish mind, saturated with the 
spirit of historic allusion, shouid link this miracle with the 
story of the manna with which Moses fed the people in the 
wilderness. Jesus accepts the challenge thus boldly offered 
Him. “What sign shewest thou that we may see and be- 
lieve thee?” is the question of the people. “Our fathers 
were fed with bread from heaven; what dost thou work ?” 
The reply of Jesus was so extraordinary that it must have 
left His hearers breathless with surprise. “Iam the bread 
of life,’ He answered; “he that cometh to Me shall never 
hunger, and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” 
Were some newcomer into the arena of philosophy or politics 
calmly to announce that all the wisdom of the past was 
elaborate folly, all the etiquette of debate a cumbrous ab- 
surdity, we can imagine the anger and derision which such a 
challenge would excite. But such an illustration affords but 
a superficial picture of the kind of rage with which the Jew 
received these statements of Jesus. The presumption of the 
speaker seemed intolerable, His arrogance unpardonable. 
Even His disciples murmured, and said, “This is a hard 


De (Giro CNS ts 193 


saying; who can hear it?” Nor did the qualification which 
Jesus attached to it—that it was transcendental not literal— 
help matters. What was clear to every mind was that Christ 
had made for Himself a claim so tremendous that if it could 
be allowed, the sceptre had been wrested from the hand of 
Moses once and for ever; if it could not be allowed—and 
who indeed could allow the claim in one whom men knew 
as the Son of a carpenter at Nazareth ?—the affront offered 

to the national religion was too deliberate for forgiveness. 
Thus a fourth great controversy began upon the person of 
Christ. He refuses to be ranked with John the Baptist, 
with Elijah, or even with Moses. His daily addresses to the 
people become full of mystic references to Himself. He 
claims an intimate and special mandate from heaven. He 
feels God moving and breathing in Him, so that His own 
words and acts are indistinguishable from the words and 
acts of God. He perceives His nature wrought to such per- 
fection that it is merged in the very hfe of God, and is part 
of the unimaginable Divine perfection. St. John tells us in 
specific language that the Jews sought to kill Him, not only 
because He had broken the Sabbath, but because He had 
said “that God was His Father, making Himself equal with 
God.” They might have remembered that even their own 
poets and prophets had spoken of God as a Father, and that 
parentage must imply some similarity, and even a real iden- 
tity, of nature. They might have turned to their own scrip- 
tures, and have found the Divine charter of the human race 
in the great saying that God had created man in His own 
image, and after His own likeness. But these truths ap- 
peared transcendental, and therefore of no accurate signifi- 
cance to the ordinary mind. Men in general show them- 
selves indifferent to questions of their origin and destiny, 
and forego their heavenly birthright, if such exists, without 
13 - 


194 JHE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


a pang. When this is the case, the attempt to claim what 
they reject appears a presumption and a blasphemy. More- 
over, Christ made the claim in terms so definite that men of 
ordinary mind were startled, and men of conventional piety 
were shocked and horrified. “The Son can do nothing of 
Himself,’ He said, “but what He seeth the Father do; for 
whatsoever things God doeth, these also doeth the Son like- 
wise.” This could only mean that Christ spoke and acted 
for God. He and the Father were one. The life of God, 
hidden in eternal secrecy, was projected on a screen, so to 
speak; and men saw that very life lived before their eyes. 
The unutterable was uttered; the formless and unthinkable 
took form; the true Shekinah, symbol of all sacred mystery, 
stood revealed in a man. 

“Strange delusion of the God-inebriated idealist!” ex- 
claims the rationalist. “Its very sublimity should have 
saved it from attack, and certainly from contempt; for it is 
by such fine excesses that human nature transcends its 
bounds, and scales the heavens!” But if it were delusion, 
it is a delusion that has deceived successfully the whole 
world. Those who study the actual life of Christ cannot 
count these claims extravagant. On nothing is mankind so 
well agreed as that the life of Christ gives the only concrete 
expression the world has ever witnessed of the Divine benig- 
nity and purity. If Jesus was not afraid thus to make Him- 
self equal with God, God need not have been ashamed to 
become the equal of Jesus; for if God can be conceived as 
living in the limits of this mortal life at all, He would cer- 
tainly have lived as Jesus lived. How we may define the 
nature and the limits of divinity as interpreted in Christ is 
of small moment, when we recollect the testimony of the 
greatest minds that it is only through Jesus that they can 
conceive of God at all. But it was scarcely to be expected 


MHuGh WAI URISIS 195 


of the Jew that he receive this witness of Christ to Himself 
without resentment. No visible perfection of conduct could 
dissipate the sense of blasphemy in such words as these. 
No Divine beauty of character could atone for them. He 
was the true Light, but the Light shone in darkness, and the 
darkness comprehended it not. 

From the moment when Christ returned from His retreat 
after the Baptist’s death, those controversies gathered round 
Him, ever widening their dimensions and increasing in in- 
tensity. Already His ascension into heaven had begun. 
More and more He soars into ideal heights, where the wing 
of human thought beats the difficult air in vain. His own 
disciples pass through many phases of doubt, of thrilling 
awe, of trembling faith. They see by gleams and flashes the 
windings of a road that is perilous with darkness. Even in 
His beloved Capernaum doubt and disaffection sow their 
fatal seeds. The lake He loves contents Him no more; 
Chorazin and Bethsaida are places which He hereafter 
doomed to sorrow for their misappreciation of the wonders 
wrought in them. He turns to the pagan populations with 
_a sense of relief. It is at this time that He makes His only 
journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. He perceives 
more and more clearly that the Gentile mind is less hostile 
to Him than the mind of His own countrymen; that the 
Jews will prove His destruction, and that the Gentiles will 
atone to Him hereafter for the wrongs wrought upon Him 
by the natural children of the Kingdom, who know not their 
King. Profound prevision! Even so has it been. Not in 
Jerusalem, but in Antioch, and Ephesus, and Rome, are the 
foundations of the future Kingdom laid secure; and with 
the death of Jesus the Jew disappears from history. By 
one sign only do we know him, his invincible hostility to 
the greatest of his race; and, merged into the life of many 


196 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


nations, adopting their ideas and putting on the raiment of 
their civilization, this invincible hostility remains unaltered. 
Surely the saddest journey Jesus ever took was this exodus 
into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. But it was the way His 
Gospel was to travel: ever westward, leaving the East to its 
slumber and its ruin; calling on a new world to redress the 
balance of the old, till at last paganism accepts with joy the 
gift rejected by the Jew, and after three centuries of conflict 
and of martyrdom the Roman eagles fall before the new 
symbol of the Cross of Christ. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 


THE district in which Jesus now found Himself presented 
strong contrasts to the district He had left. It was almost 
entirely pagan, and the Jewish population was sparse. Tyre 
was a great maritime city, distinguished by its wealth and 
luxury, which had repeatedly aroused the ire of the Hebrew 
prophets. Sidon also was a metropolis of commerce, abound- 
ing in the days of Christ with many splendid monuments of 
Greek and Roman art. It was among the rock-sepulchres 
of Sidon that there was recently discovered the sarcophagus 
of Alexander the Great, which is the noblest and most per- 
fect specimen of Greek sepulchral art which the world pos- 
sesses. Both cities were delightfully situated. Tyre is ap- 
proached from the east by wild mountain passes of Alpine 
dignity and grandeur. Sidon reposes under the immediate 
shelter of the mountain heights of Lebanon. The plain that 
les between Lebanon and the sea is of inimitable richness 
and fertility. Along this plain Christ traveled, looking for 
the first time on the impressive spectacle of a pagan life, full 
of frivolity and pleasure, and unrestrained by those gloomy 
elements of fanaticism which appeared wherever the Jew 
prevailed. It was a land of pleasure, fanned by the soft 
Mediterranean breezes and the mountain airs of Lebanon; 
cheerful, too, with the hum of prosperous toil: a land of 
streams, and groves, and fairy gardens, of palaces and villas, 
filled with a gay and eager race, whose energy in commerce 
had drawn the spoils of Europe and of Asia to their shores. 

197 


198 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Not yet had that day come, long ago foretold by the Hebrew 
prophet, when “they shall break down the towers of Tyrus, 
and make her like the top of a rock; it shall be a place for 
the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea; they shall lay 
thy pleasant houses, thy stones and thy timbers in the midst 
of the water; and the sound of thy harps shall be no more 
heard.” Besieged in turn by every conqueror from Shal- 
manesser to Alexander, and often laid in ruins, Tyre still re- 
tained her dignity, and was, with the exception of Jerusalem, 
the most imposing city Christ had ever seen. 

What were the thoughts of Jesus as He passed through 
this region, filled with people of a strange tongue, whose 
whole method of thought and life was so different from any 
that He had seen in Galilee? We have but one incident to 
guide us. A certain Syro-Phoenician woman came to Him be- 
seeching Him to exercise His marvelous power in curing her 
daughter of one of those forms of hysteric disease so com- 
mon in the Hast. She was a purely pagan woman and an 
alien. Matthew gives an almost vindictive sharpness to this 
fact by calling her “a woman of Canaan.” The disciples, 
including Matthew himself, were offended by the importunity 
with which she followed Christ, and were far from realizing 
that need speaks a common language. Here, then, was 
an excellent opportunity for Christ to put into practice 
the new conviction which had filled His mind that 
henceforth His path of conquest lay among the Gen- 
tiles. It is true that He had already shown Himself 
well disposed to Roman officials, but these, by right of con- 
quest, had become in a sense members of the Jewish nation. 
The case of this woman was wholly different. She belonged 
to a race which the Jew had been commanded to destroy, 
and the corruptions of the old idolatry still flowed in her 
blood. If she possessed any religion at all, it was probably 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 199 


some base admixture of old idolatrous superstition with the 
more modern paganism of Greece and Rome. 

The words which Jesus uses to the woman are ironical and 
enigmatic. He knows precisely the kind of thoughts which 
are in the minds of His disciples, and He apparently adopts 
them for His own, in order to expose their meanness and 
absurdity. It is a method of instruction often used by the 
ereat ironists, who have sometimes mimicked the language 
of an antagonist with such fidelity that they have been ac- 
cused of teaching the very errors which they denounced. 
But as it is only the illiterate who can take the ironies of a 
Swift for serious propositions, so it is only the indiscrimi- 
nating who will fail to see that in this incident Jesus is 
adopting language not His own, in order to reveal the poy- 
erty of thought and sympathy in His disciples. Briefly 
paraphrased the conversation is as follows: “I am not sent 
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ He remarks. 
“This is what you think of Me and of My mission. So be 
it; let us see how far this definition can be pressed in the 
presence of this woman, and her need. I will say to her 
what you would say, and what you would wish me to say: 
‘Woman, trouble me not; My charity is not for you; it is 
not meet to take the children’s bread, and cast it unto dogs!’ 
You are not ashamed of such a sentiment; have you no 
shame or surprise when you hear Me utter it? But let us 
hear what the woman herself will say to this illiberal doc- 
trine.” And with a quick glance of triumph the woman 
makes her retort, giving back irony for irony, wit for wit. 
“Truth, Lord,” she cries, “yet the dogs eat of the crumbs 
which fall from their masters’ tables!” Humility can hardly 
sink lower, faith can hardly rise higher. “O woman, great 
is thy faith,” Christ replies; “be it unto thee even as thou wilt. 
And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.” 


200 TH EWAN: CHRIS Tse 


If Jesus had desired some corroboration of this new idea 
which had filled His mind of the superior worthiness of the 
Gentiles to receive His message, He found it in this inci- 
dent. This entire mission in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon 
confirmed Him in this belief. He found everywhere a recep- 
tiveness of mind to new ideas, strange and welcome, after 
the hostile intractability of His Jewish critics. When the 
hour comes for Him to take farewell of Galilee, the happy 
memories of these days among the pagans still glow in His 
mind. “If the mighty works that have been done in Caper- 
naum, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they had repented 
long ago in sackcloth and ashes,” He exclaims in sad re- 
proach. Henceforth the hated doctrine of the substitution 
of the Gentiles for the Jews as the new custodians of spirit- 
ual ideas, takes definite and final shape. He speaks of Him- 
self in terrible language as sent that “they that see might 
not see, and that they that see might be made blind.” He de- 
scribes the Jews as the leaseholders of a vineyard to whom 
the real owner sends various servants to collect the rent, and 
last of all his own son; but they are all ssain in turn, so that 
the owner of the vineyard lets out his vineyard to “ other 
husbandmen which shall render him the fruits in their sea- 
sons.” Nor does He always conceal His meaning under 
parables. He describes Himself as a stone rejected by the 
builders, which is taken by other builders with a juster 
knowledge of its worth, who make it the head of the corner 
in the new temple of humanity which is growing into shape. 
And in language yet more positive and menacing He boldly 
declares to the Jews, “The Kingdom of God shall be taken 
from you, and given unto a nation bringing forth the fruits 
thereof.” Dangerous words indeed, full of provocation; but 
how truly wonderful in their foreknowledge of the future! 
But a few short years have passed, and to the Jews of a 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 201 


ereat city of this very coast Paul makes a public declara- 
tion which settles the course and fortunes of Christianity for 
all future generations. “It was necessary that the word of 
God should first have been spoken unto you; but seeing ye 
put it from you, and judge yourself unworthy of eternal life, 
lo! we turn to the Gentiles.” 

Such words on other lips than Christ’s would no doubt 
suggest the spirit of retaliation. It is, however, a very dif- 
ferent motive which guides the thoughts of Christ. Itis the 
enlarged, and constantly enlarging, sense of the benignity of 
God. The more Christ learns of humanity the more does 
He discern that it is worthy of the Divine love. These Gen- 
tiles, hated of the Jew, treated as spiritual pariahs incapable 
of Divine truth, nevertheless prove themselves kindly, faith- 
ful to what they know of good, ready to be taught, and quick 
to respond to new ideas. ‘To realize this involved a radical 
reconstruction of the old spiritual cosmogonies. It could not 
be that races so capable of good were foredoomed to destruc- 
tion. What sort of God could that be who ruled the uni- 
verse upon such narrow principles? Certainly not the God 
whom Jesus worshipped. Hence the need for a new defini- 
tion of God which should accord with the manifest facts of 
life. The tribal God was henceforth impossible, and the 
Jehovah of the Jew was, after all, a tribal God. Such a God 
belonged to an age of spiritual barbarism, which was happily 
drawing to its close. The catholic qualities of good in man 
suggested a catholic goodness in God. Before the Gentiles 
could be evangelized it was necessary to affirm that they had 
a real claim on God, not inferior to the claim of the sons of 
Abraham, and that that claim was allowed. It was under 
the compulsion of this reasoning that Jesus now began to 
teach in language more definite than any He had yet used 
the catholic benignity of God. 


202 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


We have the best means of studying this doctrine in a 
series of great parables, which may be collected under the 
general title of the parables of the Divine Benignity. They 
were uttered at various times, and in many places, but they 
have a common objective. They were in every case directed 
against the Pharisees, who were the constituted guardians of 
the old cosmogony, teaching in season and out of season the 
doctrine dear to Jewish pride, that the Jew alone had coy- 
enanted claims on God. 

The first series may be called the parables of Hospitality. 
St. Luke narrates two of these in a single chapter, as being 
uttered at one time, when Jesus was eating bread in the 
house of one of the chief of the Pharisees. The first is quite 
simple. It is a sketch drawn from the life of the proud and 
presumptuous man, who being called to a marriage feast, imme- 
diately chose the best seat for himself. He is but one guest 
among many, and his conduct is equally destitute of cour- 
tesy and consideration. Other guests, not inferior to him- 
self, but of a humbler mind, take the lower seats at the long 
table, at the head of which the bridegroom sits. But mat- 
ters are speedily readjusted by the interference of the bride- 
groom himself. The humble guest at the end of the table, 
sitting with the menials of the household, is beckoned to a 
place beside the bridegroom, and the Pharisee is punished 
for his arrogance by being requested to take the lower seat. 
The effect of this anecdote is greatly heightened when we re- 
member that the Pharisees were peculiarly sensitive on mat- 
ters of etiquette, always claiming the place of honor at feasts, 
and arranging the places of their guests with a strict regard 
to the dignity of each. What Jesus means to imply is that 
they have treated the whole subject of religion in the same 
spirit of offensive arrogance. They have claimed to be the 
chief friends of God. They have scorned the poorer guests 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 203 


of God, for whom the broken crusts of truth were good 
enough. ‘They have made God such an one as themselves, 
attributing their own meanness of mind to Him, who allows 
their claim. Christ represents God as acting with a consid- 
eration for the humbler children of His bounty which the 
Pharisee never felt. The scorned are honored, the lowly are 
uplifted, the abased are exalted, those who claim nothing are 
given the best. And these poor people, in whom we see the 
Gentile nations, are thus honored, because they are worthy 
of honor. ‘They alone have behaved well; their humility and 
good manners are their titles to dignity. The Bridegroom 
thus becomes the spokesman of that God, ever loving and 
benign, who causes His sun to rise upon the evil and the 
good, and is no respecter of persons. 

This anecdote is followed by a plain discourse which en- 
larges this idea of the Divine benignity. The natural prin- 
ciple of human hospitality is social intercourse between 
equals. Men invite their equals to their tables, perhaps 
their superiors, but rarely their inferiors. Yet there were 
many exquisite axioms in Jewish ethics which forbade this 
spirit of exclusiveness. The men to whom Jesus spoke 
might have remembered their own legend that Job lived in a 
house that was built four-square, with a door at each side, 
always open, that the traveler coming from whatever quarter 
might find welcome. One of the counsels of Jewish wisdom 
was, “ Let the house be open toward the street, and let the 
poor be the sons of thy house.” Even so God’s hospitality 
was prepared for all peoples. That is not a real hospitality 
which is arranged upon a scheme of social equivalents. The 
guest knows too well that for every mouthful he may eat he 
must make return. He is really effecting an exchange in 
which every farthing will be counted. Though no bill is 
presented with the last course of the banquet, yet the bill 


204 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


will come in due time. Such is the prevailing principle of 
that social hospitality which is no hospitality at all, but 
merely an exchange of meals. “ When thou makesta feast,” 
says Jesus, “call the poor, the maimed, the halt, the lame, 
the blind, for they cannot recompense thee.” Hospitality is 
but another word for benignity. 

This discourse, which commends itself to every man of 
gentle manners and charitable heart, passes by a natural 
transition into another parable in which a sterner note is 
struck. There is little left to implication here; the parabolic 
form is but the thinnest of disguises. A certain man makes 
a great supper, and invites to it those whom he has cause 
to account his friends. Then a strange thing happens; none 
of these friends desire to come. They all begin with one 
consent to make excuses, and these excuses are described 
with a touch of mingled irony and humor. Not one of them 
is valid: this is the point which Christ elicits, because in 
this is the sting of His rebuke. The man who had bought 
a piece of land might have gone to look at it another day ; 
he who had bought a yoke of oxen might have proved them 
at his own time; and the excuse of the man who could not 
come because he had married a wife was purely farcical. 
They were subterfuges, covering a concealed dislike. They 
were so many deliberate insults, all the more offensive be- 
cause they were disingenuous. Then the master of the 
house, being angry, sends his servants out into the highways 
and the hedges to bring in the homeless and the hungry. 
They are told even to explore the lanes and byways of the 
city to discover the miserable. These come with a joyous 
and half-incredulous alacrity. Strange guests for a rich 
man’s house ; but their rags conceal nobler hearts than beat 
beneath the robes of those reluctant friends, who mocked and 
chattered at a distance. Never was there feast more joyous 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 205 


than this, where an unexpected hospitality is repaid by hon- 
est gratitude and love. Benignity finds its reward in this 
precious gift of affection from the despised. The inference 
cannot be mistaken. God no longer calls the Pharisees His 
friends. The world shall come and eat of the feast which 
they rejected. The form of invitation henceforth shall be, 
“Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.” From the 
East and the West, from the North and the South, there 
shall crowd those that are not the children of Abraham, and 
shall sit down at the banquet which is spread to inaugurate 
the new Kingdom. The grim Jehovah, created out of Jew- 
ish pride and exclusiveness, vanishes with the smoke of use- 
less sacrifices and propitiations ; and instead there reigns the 
universal Father, who gathers all His children to His knees. 

The parables of hospitality have associated with them the 
parables of Sympathy. ‘The parable or incident of the Good 
Samaritan is the finest exposition of social sympathy which 
Christ ever delivered, and we pay it the noblest possible tri- 
bute when we say that it is endorsed by the universal con- 
science of mankind. But itis much more than an exposition 
of social sympathy. Once more, as in the parable of the 
guests at the marriage feast, Christ selects for praise a man 
whose fine behavior affords a striking contrast to the bad be- 
havior of the Jew. From his lowly seat in society he is 
called to the place of honor because he deserves honor for his 
unaffected benignity of nature. He has learned what the 
Levite and the Priest have never so much as guessed—that 
the essence of all piety is to do good, asking no return. If 
God is well pleased with him, it is because this man’s nature 
is in accord with the nature of God. It is so that God cares 
for the wounded, the neglected, the unhappy, with a catholic 
benevolence. If this man, being evil, knows how to give 
good gifts of wine and oil, charity and thoughtfulness, to one 


206 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


who has no claim upon him save his need, how much more 
shall the Heavenly Father give good gifts to them that ask 
Him. Or, to put the truth in yet more positive form, if 
man can thus be sympathetic for his brother in misfortune, 
how much wider is the sympathy of God. It is character- 
istic of Jesus that He habitually interprets God’s nature by 
all that is best in man’s. He does this specifically in the 
Lord’s Prayer, when He bases man’s hope of Divine forgive- 
ness on man’s willingness to forgive his brother. The river 
cannot rise above its source ; man’s virtue cannot be superior 
to his Creator’s. To be perfect as God is perfect is the sub- 
lime hope of human life. The good and benevolent man is 
thus the replica of God. The dewdrop may carry in its 
bosom the perfect image of the star; light, whether gath- 
ered to a point on the surface of the dewdrop, or diffused 
through boundless firmaments, is the same. Human nature 
itself is thus God’s witness ; and whenever we see in another 
some special kindness or virtue we may say, “Love is of 
God, and God is love.” 

But chief of all the parables of sympathy is the parable of 
the Lost Sheep, or, as it should be called, the parable of the 
Seeking Shepherd. In this miniature drama man again be- 
comes the exponent of God. “What man of you, having an 
hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the 
ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is 
lost, until he find it?” The appeal is made to the average 
of men and women, yet here is a catholic instinct of humanity 
so strong that Christ confidently challenges it. “ What man 
of you would not do this?” He asks. Things that are lost 
always appear to be of more value than things that have 
never been in peril of loss. The bereaved mother eternally 
persuades herself that the child that died was the flower of 
the flock, and for the son who has gone astray the father 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 207 


will entertain a strong and pitiful passion of love not excited 
by the child whose life has been a pattern of obedient virtue. 
The question proposed by Christ is really this: Shall God 
be content that any one should be for ever lost? If the 
human shepherd will undertake incredible exertion to re- 
cover one lost sheep, shall the Divine Shepherd of Souls be 
less magnanimous, less determined in His effort to save 
men, or less successful? The exquisite conception of God 
as the Shepherd was as old as the twenty-third Psalm. The 
corresponding conception of man as a sheep was equally 
familiar: ‘All we like sheep have gone astray,” is Isaiah’s 
summary of human transgression. They have not gone 
astray as wolves, through incurable barbarism of the blood, 
but as sheep through heedlessness, folly, and lack of knowl- 
edge. Man is therefore to be pitied for his waywardness. 
There is no need to punish one who punishes himself so 
thoroughly. The last thought of the good shepherd is to 
punish the strayed sheep; when he finds it, tears of pity fill 
his eyes, and he lays it on his shoulders with the tenderest 
of hands, and carries it in his bosom. It is so that God 
feels for man. Heaven is sad while one soul with a right to 
heaven is missing. God will leave the safely folded sheep 
and go out to seek the lost “until He find it.” Far as it has 
strayed, it is not beyond recovery, and the only limit to re- 
covery lies in the ability of the shepherd to recover it. 
Things that are impossible with man are possible with God ; 
and though zon after son pass before the last strayed sheep 
of God is found, yet the Good Shepherd will certainly go on 
seeking “until He find it.” Such is the parable of Christ, 
and was ever the truth of the Divine benignity taught 
with more exquisite felicity of metaphor, or with tenderer 
grace ? 

And then, almost without metaphor, the Divine benignity 


208 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


receives its crowning statement in the immortal story of the 
Prodigal Son. This story is miscalled the story of the 
Prodigal Son; it is really the parable of the Benignant 
Father. It is the father who from first to last takes the eye 
in this heart-moving human drama. Neither son is worthy 
of him; the moral distance between him and them is made 
intentionally wide. The elder brother is virtuous enough, 
but he has all the vices of conventional virtue: pride, nar- 
rowness, self-esteem, pharisaism,—completely destitute of no- 
bility or grace of character. The younger brother is vicious, 
but he has some of the virtues of the vicious: rash and im- 
petuous generosity, love of friends, warmth of temperament, 
boyish daring, and delight in life. But in the father’s con- 
duct there is no flaw. He treats both sons with faultless 
magnanimity. He gives them their rights, and more than 
their rights. He opposes to the levity of his younger son 
and the insults of his elder a temper of infinite sweetness and 
reasonableness. He is disappointed in each, but there is no 
harshness on his lips. He might justly have been indignant; 
but he is only hurt and grieved. He sees the course which 
the faults of each will take, and knows that they will cure 
themselves. From the hour when the younger son disap- 
pears into the far country the father knows that he must 
come back. The prodigal drags “the lengthening chain” 
that binds him to his home. When at last he returns there 
is no recrimination on his father’s lips. The boy’s sins and 
follies are not so much as named. He is treated as an 
honored guest for whom the feast is prepared and the best 
robe reserved. The rebuke that is addressed to the grudging 
elder brother is couched in terms of dignity and tenderness. 
The force and depth of that infinite affection which composes 
fatherhood is revealed at every stage of the drama; for while 
each son in turn forgets the duties of his sonship, the father 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD’S BENIGNITY 209 


never for an instant forgets the duties of his fatherhvod. It 
is but a narrow hteralism which makes this large-hearted 
parable a rebuke of the Pharisees, an affirmation of the 
claims of Gentile nations whom the Pharisees despised. No 
doubt this was a lesson which Jesus meant to be observed ; 
but the parable stands for something much wider and loftier. 
lt is the perfect exposition of the Divine Benignity, the final 
revelation of the Fatherhood of God; and it has become to 
all Christian thinkers through all generations the “master 
light of all their seeing.” 

“Likewise I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,” said Jesus. 
This is the noble refrain of the parables of the Seeking Shep- 
herd, and of the Benignant Father. The angel choir that 
sang of peace and goodwill over Bethlehem is answered by 
the full chorus of a joyous heaven, moved to rapture over the 
reclamation of a single human soul. Never did music so 
lofty or so astonishing salute human ears. Hitherto the 
heavens had seemed to man not benignant but malignant. 
The terror of the God lay heavy on the human mind. The 
ereatest of Greek dramatists can only conceive of God as the 
President of the Immortals, pursuing man with the ardor of 
a cruel huntsman. lLven Job, swayed between resignation 
and resentment, cannot subdue the thought that he is the 
sport of a Divine malice, and he cries in the bitterness of his 
soul, “Thou scarest me with dreams and terrifiest me through 
visions.” Man is the eloquent martyr of an almighty malig- 
nity. ‘The powers enthroned in the heavens are in deathless 
antagonism with him. In all elementary religions the same 
thought is expressed. Aidschylus does but utter what the 
meanest savage feels when he heaps propitiations on the 
altar of his devil-god. Jesus abolishes this terror of the 
gods with a word. The veil is lifted from the heavens, and 

14 


210 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the hierarchies of power are revealed as a confraternity of 
pity. They are on the side of man, and the very joy of God 
is joy in man’s well-being. A benignant God whose love is 
free and catholic as that catholic sunlight which hghteth 
every man who comes into the world, rules over all, and 
henceforth the earth shall learn this new litany of wor- 
ship, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy 
name.” 

The Benignant God thus revealed by Jesus Christ has 
never been dethroned. The old terror has come back from 
time to time, but the human heart, strengthened by the word 
of Christ, and still more by His example, has been insurgent 
to it, and has more and more been victorious over it. The 
hateful narrowness of sects has sought to belittle Christ’s 
Divine conceptions, and they have often been obscured in 
clouds of acrid logic. Men have sometimes treated these 
conceptions as the vandals of every generation have treated 
forms of art whose dignity and sweetness they could not un- 
derstand. The fresco glowing with its messages of poetry 
and of beauty has been obscured under coats of whitewash ; 
but happily the colors are imperishable. They still pene- 
trate through all surface disfigurements, as the sublime figure 
of Christ may still be discerned in the mosque of San Sophia 
behind the color-wash with which the Turk has attempted to 
destroy the emblems of a faith he has displaced. Some day 
perhaps a Christian conqueror will enter Constantinople, and 
then this figure of Christ, which has waited patiently through 
eight centuries of shame, will step out to greet him. Some 
day, it may be, in like manner the temple of theology will be 
purged from the equal desecrations of centuries of spiritual 
‘barbarism. And then, too, the portrait Jesus drew of God 
will be again revealed in all its pristine purity. The infinite 
benignity of God will again be understood as the first and 


AFFIRMATION OF GOD'S BENIGNITY 211 


last word of all religion. The gospel of Christ will then be 
summed up in one supreme definition: “No man hath seen 
God at any time; but the only begotten of the Father, full 
of grace and truth, He hath revealed Him.” 


CHAPTER XVI 
MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 


THE parable of the Seeking Shepherd may be said to contain 
the germ of all missionary enterprise. Its dominant note is 
that if men are to be brought into the fold of God, they must 
be sought. They are both-unwilling and incapable of seek- 
ing the fold for themselves, as the lost sheep is. A general 
declaration of ethical truth, however lucid and persuasive, is 
of no avail. Were it argued, for example, that the wide 
publication of the Gospels was sufficient in itself to impreg- 
nate the whole world with Christian ideas, the immediate 
retort would be that truth needs something more than pub- 
licity before it can be generally accepted. It needs to be 
enforced by living examples and the enthusiasm of the hving 
voice. We are apt greatly to exaggerate the influence which 
literatures and their authors exercise upon the world. There 
is nothing that men in general regard with such complete in- 
difference as books. Declarations of truth, whether made 
on the forum or in the press, rarely touch more than a few 
scattered units of society. If the great mass of human crea- 
tures are to be affected by these declarations they must be 
importuned to listen. Hence truth never succeeds on any 
large scale without the spirit of active propaganda. It is 
not the Koran which explains the triumph of Mohammed, 
but the propagandist fire which he kindled in a multitude of 
ardent followers. Certainly it is not the Gospels which first 
drew attention to Christ, since His Church had already taken 
firm hold upon the world long before the Gospels were gen- 

212 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 213 


erally known. The real source of triumph lay in the energy 
of individuals who went out to seek the lost, everywhere 
compelling men to listen by the novelty of their message and 
the enthusiasm of their lives. It is this truth which makes 
Christ’s picture of the Seeking Shepherd the fertile inspira- 
tion of all missionary enterprise. 

Christ appears on two occasions to have organized His 
followers for deliberate missionary effort. In the first in- 
stance He sends forth the Apostles only, and the peculiarity 
of their mission is that they are not to “go into the way of 
the Gentiles,” nor into any city of Samaria, but to the “lost 
sheep of the house of Israel.” In the second instance we 
find a significant alteration of plan. It is no longer the 
Apostles alone who are sent, but seventy disciples specially 
selected for the work. The limitation of the mission to the 
children of Israel is withdrawn; these later Evangelists are 
to go “into every city and place whither He Himself would 
come.” This is in accord with the wider view of His mis- 
sion which possessed the mind of Christ after His visit to 
the pagan populations of Tyre and Sidon. The question 
naturally suggests itself, Why did not Christ remain among 
these pagan populations who had received Him with a joy- 
ous alacrity never manifested by His own countrymen? The 
answer is that such a decision would have manifested a spirit 
of resentment against His own countrymen which Christ was 
incapable of feeling. The more bitterly the Pharisees were 
opposed to Him the more necessary did it seem to affirm His 
claims in Jerusalem, which was the very citadel of Phari- 
saism. The man of heroic temper inevitably chooses a dif- 
ficult course in preference to an easy one. Danger in itself 
is a powerful element of attraction. Moreover, Christ fore- 
sees that the hour will soon come when He Himself will be 
withdrawn, and this makes it the more necessary that His 


214 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


followers should have some preliminary exercise in the sort 
of work which will devolve upon them at no distant date. 
Hence the second mission is organized upon a wider scale 
than the first. It is meant as a reply to the Sanhedrin who 
are already devising His death. To the seventy members of 
the Sanhedrin Christ opposes seventy disciples filled with 
the spirit not of hatred but of love, moved by the instincts 
not of obscurantism but of catholic charity. They are, so to 
speak, the Sanhedrin of the New Kingdom—a Sanhedrin of 
saints. Two by two they.go forth, filled with guileless en- 
thusiasm, the advance guard of an innumerable army which 
has never since ceased to carry on its conquering propa- 
ganda. 

It is clear that these missionary enterprises were among 
the most deliberately organized of all Christ's acts. Indeed 
it may be claimed that nowhere else do we find any evidence 
of deliberate organization at all. Christ did not think it 
necessary to leave any working plan for the establishment of 
His Church. His institutions are limited to two—Baptism 
and the Lord’s Supper. His doctrines themselves were not 
reduced to axiomatic form, nor was any effort made to pre- 
serve them in writing. Apparently nothing was more re- 
mote from the mind of Christ than that which is the first in- 
stinct in the minds of all great teachers and reformers, viz., 
to organize firmly doctrines and institutions which shall be 
their perpetual memorial. But the sending out of the sev- 
enty is prefaced by very definite instructions. There is put 
into the hand of each a code of conduct and behavior drawn 
up by the Master Himself. How deeply impressed Jesus 
Himself was with the importance of this step we may judge 
by two incidents. In what were almost His dying moments 
His mind goes back to the first missionary journey of the 
Twelve, and He says to His sorrowing disciples, “When I 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 215 


sent you without purse and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any- 
thing?” In the last recorded speech of all, before Jesus 
vanishes for ever into the heavens, His mind is still glowing 
with the ardor of the propagandist: “Go ye unto all the 
world, and preach the Gospel to every creature.” If from 
such suggestive incidents anything can be deduced, it is that 
the thought dearest to the heart of Christ was missionary en- 
terprise. 

What was the nature of this code of instructions placed 
in the hands of these first missionaries? If it be, as we take 
it to be, the one deliberate attempt of Christ in practical or- 
ganization, it must needs be regarded as a statement of prin- 
ciples. What were the principles which Christ enunciated 
as indispensable not merely to this particular mission, but to 
all similar enterprises conducted in His name throughout the 
ages ? 

The document commences with a prologue stating the 
grounds on which the work is undertaken, and one significant 
detail of the new organization in relation to the disciples 
themselves. “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers 
are few,’ says Jesus. The capacity and readiness of man- 
kind in general to receive the new truth is thus taken for 
granted. Nothing that has happened by way of blind preju- 
dice and envenomed opposition has shaken Christ’s belief in 
the good qualities of human nature. Men are ripe for the 
harvest; they are as corn ready to fall before the sickle. 
God has taken care to sow the Divine seed in human hearts ; 
it is for man now to gather the first fruits. Amid a thousand 
debasements human nature in general remains virtuous. It 
has its roots in God, and the surprising fact is not that man 
is so bad, but that he is so good. He who sees nothing but 
the gross depravity of human nature is disqualified for all 
missionary enterprise because he is destitute of hope. Faith 


216 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


in man and man’s capacity for good must precede any serious 
attempt to make him better. But there are no doubt many 
erounds for dejection in attempting such a task, and this de- 
jection is most sensibly felt by the solitary worker. The 
missionary, of all men, by the very nature of his task, needs 
the stimulus of comradeship. Nothing sustains him so well, 
nothing invigorates him so deeply, as the sense of confrater- 
nity. Therefore Christ, with an admirable wisdom, sends 
out His missionaries two by two. The principle of brother- 
hood in work is thus affirmed. ‘The enthusiast, more liable 
than most men to fits of depression, to brooding painful 
thoughts, and in periods of triumph to self-applausive pride, 
needs some one near him who shall regulate his egoism, cor- 
roborate his message, console his fears, animate his droop- 
ing courage, and in all things give what he himself receives, 
the stimulus of social intercourse. ‘To the propagandist soli- 
tude is a fruitful source of temptation and disablement; but 
the force of all propagandas is vastly increased by the warmth 
and ardor of a corporate life among their members. So we 
see these men depart upon their appointed ways, talking as 
they go of the things nearest to their hearts, and illustrating 
in their love for one another the essential brotherhood of 
that New Kingdom which they represent. 

If we now turn to the code of instructions itself, the firg 
thing that arrests the mind is the counsel of non-resistance. 
In the significant phrase of Christ they are sent forth “as 
lambs among wolves.” Perhaps no doctrine that Christ ever 
taught has been more fruitful of controversy than this doc- 
trine of non-resistance. Yet a very brief study of Christ’s 
teachings on the subject, if it be careful and intelligent, is 
sufficient to make His meaning tolerably clear. Jt must be 
remembered that almost all Christ’s sayings on non-resist- 
ance were uttered in the form of proverbs, and the essence 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 217 


of a proverb is that it overstates a point, and rejects qualifi- 
cations, for the sake of calling attention in emphatic fashion 
to some particular truth. Thus when Christ says, “Resist 
not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, 
turn to him the other also,” it is an overstatement, made for 
the sake of emphasis. The meaning is that it is better to 
be twice insulted than to do one wrong by requiting violence 
with violence. When Christ says that if a man shall by ille- 
gal means deprive you of your coat, “let him have thy cloak 
also,” it is an overstatement, the meaning of which is, that it is 
better to endure a wrong than to assert a right in a spirit of re- 
sentment and retaliation. When Christ says, “Give to him that 
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee, turn not 
thouaway,” it is again an overstatement, the obvious meaning of 
which is that it is better to give to every one than to no one, 
to be unwisely generous than not to be generous at all 
These enigmatic sayings inculcate a certain spirit and tem- 
per; they do not lay down a literal law of conduct. They 
do not mean that the disciple is never to remonstrate against 
injustice, never to take advantage of the just and rightful 
laws which are the protection of society, for obviously this 
would imply an encouragement to injustice, which in the 
Jong run would prove fatal to society. Christ Himself pro- 
tested against the injustice of His arrest, and rebuked the 
officer of the High Priest’s court who struck Him, saying, 
“WM J have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well, 
why smitest thou Me?” And as one reads these words of 
Christ, as reported by St. Matthew, their meaning is made 
absolutely clear by the nature of the context. They form an 
indictment of the vindictive spirit of the Mosaic law, which 
exacted an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; and they 
are a protest against the spirit of retaliation. The loss of 
property by unjust exaction is a less evil than the loss of 


218 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


spiritual peace in the effort to recover it; and the endurance 
of wrong is a less injury than the injury wrought upon the 
soul by the angry passion of resentment invoked for its re- 
dress. This is the true meaning of Christ’s law of non-re- 
sistance, and it defines its scope in such a way that it is no 
longer a hard saying to men of wise and generous temper. 

This law is now applied to the career of the Christian 
propagandist. Insult and outrage will await these disciples 
in the execution of the great task entrusted to them. Wrong 
will be inflicted on them for which no casuistry can discover 
the smallest element of justification. Their wisdom will be 
in a complete freedom from resentment. By enduring the 
wrong they will only strengthen their case, and will win ad- 
ditional respect. ‘The persecuted man is always stronger 
than his persecutor. ‘There is what Milton finely calls “an 
irresistible might” in weakness which in time wears down 
the fiercest enmity of persecution. These men are sent forth 
as lambs among wolves; but the meekness of the lamb in 
enduring wrong survives the cruelty of the wolf in inflicting 
it. The beatitude of the martyr is a real beatitude: “ Blessed 
are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” ‘They are not only blessed 
in the composure of their own spirits under suffering, but 
their cause is helped forward by the impression which that 
composure makes on others. And so it has always been. 
Not by force nor by might have the greatest causes tri- 
umphed ; but by the conquering fortitude and tranquillity of 
those who have endured the loss of all things for their sake. 
Loss is thus the surest gain, and martyrdom the weapon of 
the most effectual victory. 

The second instruction which Christ gives to these seventy 
missionaries is a counsel against all worldly preparations. 
They are to carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes. Here 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 219 


again Christ intentionally overstates the case, for the pur- 
pose of calling attention to a particular truth. That truth is 
the peril of worldly sagacity in its application to spiritual 
propagandas. Worldly sagacity is not totally condemned’; 
St. Matthew amplifies this instruction with the significant 
words, “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as 
doves.” But worldly sagacity, if allowed unrestricted li- 
cense, is deterrent of enthusiasm. Had Paul, in his great 
missionary journeys waited for a complete organization of 
resources, he would never have started at all. The conquer- 
ing army creates its own resources by its conquests. Great 
movements cannot wait on questions of finance and commis- 
sariat. Those who see the final triumph of some benevolent 
crusade, when it is fully equipped with all the means of 
victory, and elaborately organized, frequently assume that it 
has possessed these means from the first. Nothing can be 
further from the truth. Crusades usually begin in the ardent 
hearts of solitary enthusiasts, and the material means of suc- 
cess are elicited in the degree of the enthusiasm. No benevo- 
lent crusade was ever justified by worldly sagacity. Its 
deadliest enemy would have been the astute organizer of 
victory, unwilling to stir an inch till its machinery was per- 
fected. A resolute and ardent faith achieves triumphs of 
which worldly sagacity never dreams. Christ, in uttering 
this counsel, enunciates a folly which has repeatedly proved 
wiser than the wisdom of the world. He will permit these 
men not the least preparation for their journey. They are 
to go with empty purses, and with but one suit of raiment. 
They are to east themselves boldly on the people as pious 
mendicants. They are to stay at no hostelries; and their 
very destitution of money is meant to ensure this end. It is 
enough for the disciple if he be as the Lord, who had no 
place where to lay His head. Perhaps Christ had already 


220 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


seen in Judas the kind of evil which financial prudence 
works, and He is determined that in this new society money 
shall play no part at all. There is at all events nothing that 
can tempt the worldly man in such a life, and there is every- 
thing to repel him. Where there are no funds to be treasured 
there will be no Judas; where abject poverty is made a law 
of life the gate is made so strait that none but pure enthusi- 
asts will seek to enter it. 

The enthusiast also has his faults, among which is a tend- 
ency to discourtesy. Moving at a high level of thought him- 
self, conscious of ideal aims, living at a great heat of heroic 
temper, he is apt to despise ordinary men. He does not 
care to associate with them, and soon drifts into habits of 
lonely fanaticism. Christ had seen more than enough of the 
fruits of this temper in the disciples of John. No man can 
abstain from social intercourse without damage to his own 
nature. Christ therefore puts His missionaries on their 
guard against such perils by a third counsel of courtesy and 
hospitality. They are not to show themselves churlish and 
unsocial; in every city and village they are to welcome the 
kindness of those who would entertain them. They are not 
to assume airs of superiority ; they are to eat such things as 
are set before them with thankful hearts. They are to be 
perfectly courteous in their treatment of all men. When 
they enter a house they are not to omit the customary salu- 
tation—“ Peace be to this house.” They will lose nothing 
by such courtesy; the worst that can happen is that they 
will have breathed a pious wish in vain, in which case their 
salutation will “return to them again.” These may appear 
but minor morals in the conduct of a propagandist, but minor 
morals have more to do with the happiness of society than is 
commonly imagined. Great talents, or the consciousness of 
a superior mission, do not absolve men from the laws of 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 221 


courtesy. The fine axiom that rank imposes obligations ap- 
plies to the aristocracy of Christ’s kingdom as well as to the 
arbiters of earthly society. 

Moreover, there is in this counsel the indication of a cer- 
tain method of instruction by means of which truth is to be 
diffused. Apparently Christ does not expect from these 
men public orations and addresses. They are rather cate- 
chists than orators. Much of their work will be done in 
quiet personal conversations, which afford excellent oppor- 
tunities for the statement of doubts and the discussion of 
difficulties. This, as we have seen, was an essential feature 
of Christ’s own method. Public orations are of great value 
to societies already well disposed to the reception of truth ; 
but they are of little service among an alien and hostile popu- 
lation. Here more personal and intimate methods of instruc- 
tion come into play. Men must first feel the charm of 
friendship before they feel the force of truth. They must 
be approached one by one; they must be seduced into inter- 
est and attention by a patient treatment of individual difficul- 
ties. This is the work of the catechist, and these men were 
the first catechists of Christianity. It is significant that in 
the earliest missionary crusade conducted by the Apostles 
the instruction was to preach; the word is omitted in the 
instructions for this second mission. Perhaps one of the 
most common injustices visited upon missionaries by popular 
criticism is that they cannot preach and have no gift of 
oratory. We should recollect that the missionary is still a 
catechist, as these men were, in the great majority of in- 
stances. His chief work is done not in the market-place 
but in the homes of the people. And if it were possible 
to differentiate between the two methods and their results, 
it might be found that the kingdom of God owes more 
to the humble labor of the catechist than to orations in 


222 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the theatre of Ephesus or on the splendid slopes of the 
Acropolis. 

A fourth instruction gives great weight and solemnity to 
the whole enterprise. One of the most frequent thoughts of 
Jesus was that there was vested in Him an inevitable power 
of judgment. Men were judged, or rather judged themselves, 
by their attitude toward Him. He supplied the solvent or 
‘the test which dissolved society into its element. Wherever 
He came a process of sifting or discrimination began. The 
evil withdrew from Him,.the good were attracted. He spe- 
cially warns His disciples against the folly of supposing that 
a new truth can establish itself without opposition; He has 
come not to bring peace but a sword. Livery new idea is a 
sword, every reform a battle; and around every great re- 
former there gathers the great Armageddon of irreconcilable 
moral differences. He applies this truth now to the work 
entrusted to these eager propagandists. Enthusiasm dis- 
solves into mere emotion unless it includes certain elements 
of sternness. ‘The enthusiast is the appointed judge of his 
time, and he must be prepared to do his work with firmness. 
If in any city their message is not received, they are to turn 
from that city, and to wipe its very dust off their feet as a 
witness against it. It is foolish to waste pains upon a soil 
wholly intractable and barren. It is still more foolish to 
lament unduly over such a fact. The true success of all re- 
form lies in a wise adaptation of means to ends. If it 
happened with them, as it had happened with Him, that 
Judea rejects what Tyre and Sidon receive with glad- 
ness, let them follow the line of the least resistance and 
sow their seed in a soil that will yield the readiest har- 
vest. There is a false heroism, a kind of Quixotism, 
prone to spend its energies on the impossible, by which 
the enthusiast is frequently seduced; Christ inculcates the 


MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE 223 


spirit of that saner, if less striking, heroism which measures 
energy by opportunity. The spiritual Don Quixote, like his 
great prototype of romance, is really half insane, and what 
in him passes for heroism is but wasteful folly after all. 
Jesus sees the peril of undisciplined enthusiasm. He speaks 
not as a fanatic, but with the profound wisdom of the great 
administrator, who knows that in a long campaign there must 
be defeats as well as victories. The brave man, however, 
knows how to coin victory out of defeat, and Christ would 
have His followers share that rare intrepidity of spirit which 
leaves the lost battlefield with dignity to seek another where 
triumph is assured. 

Such is the plan of propaganda drawn up by Christ for 
the seventy disciples. We have no means of knowing the 
route they took, the cities they visited, or the length of time 
devoted to their adventurous crusade. Some details of their 
journey are preserved. ‘They appear to have exercised the 
same kind of power over forms of hysteric mania which 
Christ Himself possessed. They were able to heal the sick. 
They attracted general attention by their spirit of benevo- 
lence. A joyous ecstasy characterized all their words and 
movements. They returned to Jesus full of natural elation 
over what they had seen and done. Jesus Himself rejoiced 
in their success as the success of the simple and the humble. 
In that hour His soul poured itself out in pious thankfulness 
that God who, had hid these things from the wise and pru- 
dent, had revealed them unto babes. Kings and prophets 
had desired to see a kingdom founded on principles of pure 
benevolence, and had not seen it; what the wise had dreamed 
in vain, and thought impossible, had now taken form and 
shape in the triumph of the simple. He read in these things 
the sublime augury of the future. Already He saw Satan 
falling as lightning from heayen—the immense overthrow and 


294 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


ruin of the hierarchies of evil. In this magnificent phrase 
He pre-dated the final hour of time, and saw as accomplished 
what in reality had but commenced. Yet the phrase was 
true, as it is true that he who looks upon the seed already 
sees the triumph of those sequences of law by which the 
harvest is produced. ‘To the prophetic mind time does not 
exist, and the end is as the beginning. In that hour Jesus 
knew that He had found the weapon of universal conquest. 
By men like these, humble and devoted, loyal to a Captain 
whom they deemed invincible, His truths would be spread 
through every land, and the meek would inherit the earth. 
And so in every age we see awful and benignant figures 
moving on the roads of martyrdom: resolute confessors of 
derided truths enduring opposition with fortitude and equa- 
nimity ; the sons of charity compassing the world with pil- 
grimages of a tireless pity. The flame of noble ardor lit 
in the bosoms of these simple Galileans has never left the 
world. Often half extinguished by the rancour of polemics, 
or reduced to smouldering embers by the apathy of faithless 
generations, the flame has burned on, breaking out from time 
to time in unexpected radiance. The ancient legend which 
asserted that while the sacred fire burned upon the altar of 
the Vestal Virgins Rome would stand, has its counterpart in 
the actual facts of Christianity. Christianity is propagandist 
or it is nothing; and it can only perish by the loss of that 
Divine ardor which Christ Himself breathed into it when 
He sent forth His disciples to teach all nations, secure in 
the conviction that He was with them alway, even to the 
end of the world. 


CHAPTER XVII 
THE EVENT AT CHSAREA PHILIPPI 


We now follow the footsteps of Jesus in His last north- 
ward journey before He steadfastly sets His face to go to 
Jerusalem. It is difficult to resist the impression of rest- 
lessness and even aimlessness in these last wanderings 
into pagan or semi-pagan territory. It is a new and 
strange quality in the actions of Christ, as a rule so de- 
liberate and serene; but there is much to explain it. More 
than ever conscious of the breadth and significance of 
His mission, He finds His message everywhere met with 
increasing hostility and foresees the hour when Galilee 
itself will finally reject Him. Young and full of ardor, 
He perceives the shadow of death which is slowly gather- 
ing on His path. He has heard but the prelude of ma- 
ture manhood, and in those resonant chords a requiem is 
mingled. To familiarize the mind with this new thought of 
martyrdom is difficult indeed, for Jesus had none of that 
half-morbid and half-heroic appetite for death which thou- 
sands of martyrs have displayed. He is full of a healthy 
love of life, and when at last the hour strikes we find Him 
praying that if it be possible the cup may pass from Him. 
He needs time to familiarize His mind with these awful pos- 
sibilities, hours of solitude and meditation, and not less op- 
portunities of tender monologue with His disciples, in which 
He may make His own thoughts clear by ascertaining theirs. 
For a time the charities and intellectual energies of His 
public life are suspended. We read of but one act of heal- 

15 225 


226 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


ing on this journey, of but one public discourse. He travels 
by the Lake of Merom and the springs of Jordan, silent and 
absorbed in the vision of His own destiny ; He already feels 
the sacrificial fillets bound upon His brow. Other journeys 
had been memorable in their effects upon the world; this 
was memorable in the revelation of the things which con- 
cerned Himself. 

Caesarea Philippi, the ancient Paneas, the modern Banias, 
was the limit of the journey. It was a city magnificent for 
situation, and scarcely less magnificent in itself. It pos- 
sessed a famous grotto, dedicated after the Greek fashion to 
the worship of Pan; from the red sandstone cliff which over- 
hung the town the Jordan itself rushed forth in clear and 
limpid springs; dominating both the cliff and the city rose 
the temple of white marble which Herod had erected in 
honor of Augustus. The ancient pagan Nature-worship is 
still attested by many Greek inscriptions on the surface of 
the rock. The city itself has been described as a “Syrian 
Tivoli.” Here there met the eye of Christ all the signs of 
that luxurious pagan life which He had already seen in Tyre 
and Sidon, but upon a nobler scale of grandeur and refine- 
ment. Splendid villas rose amid the olive orchards and the 
groves of oak; a vast castle, comparable with the greatest 
works of medizval Europe, crowned the heights. Jewish 
life was scarcely represented here. It was Rome herself, 
guided by her invariable instinct for sites of natural beauty 
and superb effects of architecture, that had planted her im- 
perialism in this lovely spot. Northward of the city rose 
the snowclad heights of Hermon, as Monte Rosa overhangs 
the plains of Lombardy. Here the Holy Land terminated ; 
it was the final outpost of the inheritance of Jacob; and 
here one of the greatest scenes in the hfe of Jesus was 
transacted. 


EVENT AT CASAREA PHILIPPI 227 


The scene commences with a question on the part of 
Christ which significantly marks the inward current of His 
thoughts. “By the way,” as they drew near to Cesarea 
Philippi, Jesus asked His disciples, “Whom do men say 
that I am?” It was an interrogation which He had often 
addressed to His own consciousness. Perhaps He now 
sought corroboration of these inward thoughts, as friend 
may from friend, seeking to compare the verdict of His own 
consciousness with theirs. Whatever consciousness Jesus 
had of Himself it was clearly a gradual and a growing con- 
sciousness. We have already seen how He passes by de- 
grees from the conception of His ministry as a ministry to 
the house of Israel to the wider conception of it as a minis- 
try to the Gentiles too; from His conception of Himself as 
the Son of Man to the loftier conception of Himself as 
dwelling in God, and therefore in a special sense the Son of 
God; and He is finally to overpass both these spacious 
limits and recognize Himself not as the Saviour of a race, or 
of races, but of the whole world. It would seem as though 
veil after veil were silently withdrawn from His spirit as His 
perception of Himself becomes almost daily clearer. As He 
grows into the consciousness of His true relation to God He 
passes in the same degree into the true consciousness of 
Himself. His thoughts 


‘¢Through words and things 
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way,” 


and it is surely no irreverence to suppose that in this pro- 
cess there should be moments of hesitation, amazement, and 
doubt. Even on the Cross doubt was with Him, and the 
agony of His spirit, refusing to be silenced, found expression 
in the great cry, “My God, My God, why hast Thou for- 
saken Me?” All His intuitions point to one almost unut- 


228 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


terable verdict, but how insecure is the verdict of intuition 
amid the clamorous materialisms of life! It is for Him 
now to repeat the question of Nicodemus, “ How can these 
things be?” Can man be caught up into the blaze of Deity 
and yet be unconsumed? And being man, and still in the 
flesh, Christ turns to His friends for sympathy, but scarcely 
for enlightenment. Whom do men in general say that He is? 
Whom do they—the disciples—say that He is? They have 
beheld His glory, as the glory of the only-begotten, full of 
truth and grace ; is it in them to corroborate in any way His 
growing consciousness of Himself? And, alas, for the in- 
competence of human judgment, they can but reply, “Some 
say John the Baptist; some, Elias; some, one of the 
prophets!” And yet in this feeble and even absurd reply 
there is one element that strikes the mind at once. These 
men cannot forbear witnessing to some ineffable quality in 
Christ, which, by the poverty of language, can only be de- 
scribed as the quality of supernaturalism, for in each of 
these confessions He is compared not with the living, but 
the dead. He is to them as one of the great dead come to 
life again, as one of the master-spirits of the world reincar- 
nated. It is a tribute to the immortal element of mystery in 
Jesus which they had felt and which the world has always 
felt. And then comes the bold reply of Simon Peter: 
“Thou art not one of these, but one infinitely greater ; Thou 
art the very Christ.” 

At last it seems as though Christ had gained the long- 
desired corroboration of His own inmost thoughts; and yet 
Peter is not less wrong than the rest in his estimate of 
Christ. “The Christ”—but what Christ? Clearly the 
Christ of common Jewish tradition, a patriot, a deliverer, a 
soldier, a governor of men, a builder of empire, a second 


Solomon, a greater David. That is the Christ of Peter, and 


EVENT AT: CAESAREA. PHILIPPI 229 


of all the disciples. We have but to remember many pages 
of the subsequent history to see that their conceptions never 
rose above this level; the story of how they contested with 
each other on places of authority in the new kingdom ; of 
Judas, the disappointed patriot who throws the cause up in 
disgust ; of Peter, the desperate patriot, who buys a sword 
that he may die fighting for his Master. When Jesus re- 
plies to Peter that he must tell no man of Him the meaning 
is clear: Christ forbids Peter to proclaim such a Christ- 
hood as this. And then He proceeds to teach these men 
how vain their dream is by showing them that “the Son of 
Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, 
and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after 
three days rise again.” The Christhood that comes through 
suffering and death, and which, by being triumphant over 
death, rules men always to the end of the world, is the spirit- 
ual Christhood Jesus outlines. But the conception is at 
once too spiritual and too sublime for Peter. He is grieved 
and indignant, and takes Christ aside that he may remon- 
strate with Him. Nothing in the actions of this lovable 
and impetuous man brings him nearer to the human heart 
than this, for he does what all men of quick temper and 
ardent feeling would have done. But not the less his error 
is disastrous. Unknown to himself, he plays the part of 
devil’s advocate, renewing the temptation in the wilderness 
with the empty promise that if Jesus will but be a Christ 
after Peter’s pattern all the kingdoms of the world and the 
glory of them shall be His. And theretore Christ addresses 
to this beloved disciple the most terrible and crushing words 
He ever spoke to any human creature: “Get thee behind 
Me, Satan, for thou savorest not of the things of God, but 
the things that be of men.” And then, with this noble 
sternness still vibrating in His voice, He calls the people to 


230 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Him, and addresses to them a truth which He has long 
since accepted for Himself: “What shall it profit a man if 
he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” 
While He speaks perhaps He sees upon the heights of this 
Roman city a Cross standing black against the midday sky, 
and a sudden intense prevision of His own end assails 
Him. “Whosoever will come after Me, let him take up his 
cross and follow Me,” He cries. This is the predestined 
road of all Messiahship, this the end at which the Christs of 
truth and love arrive. These men can tell Him nothing 
after all; He alone knows Himself. For an instant He has 
leaned on others for corroboration of His own consciousness 
of Himself, and they have miserably failed Him. The soli- 
tary ineffable witness of His own spirit alone can sustain 
Him; the last veil is lifted from His heart, and He sees 
Himself foredoomed to die as man before the world shall 
recognize Him as God. 

This conversation occurred upon the way to Czsarea 
Philippi, probably when the band of disciples already stood 
almost at its gate. Peter, who is generally credited with the 
reminiscences which pass under the name of St. Mark, 
records it against himself witha merciless magnanimity. St. 
Matthew, however, gives another version of the incident, 
which leads us to suppose that the conversation was con- 
tinued in Cesarea Philippi itself. It is at least likely 
that so grave a theme was not summarily dismissed. 
Peter especially would have cause to seek its re- 
newed discussion. Through the bitter dreams of that sad 
night the words of Christ would haunt him. Perhaps 
Christ, ever full of a peculiar tenderness for Peter, gave His 
erring disciple the opportunity of once more affirming his 
faith, and this time without the reservations of timidity and 
ignorance. But however this may be, St. Matthew records a 


BVION Is. ATi GUBSAREALPTILIPPI: ) 934 


saying of Christ’s to Peter which has been a rock of offence 
indeed to all readers of the Gospels through many genera- 
tions. In this second conversation, if such it was, Peter not 
only accepts Christ as the Messiah, but adds, “ Thou art the 
Son of the living God.” Christ replies with a play on 
words, which is almost lost in the process of translation. 
The city of Cxesarea Philippi, founded on a rock and grow- 
ing like a superb flower of stone out of the living rock, sug- 
gests a metaphor, “Thou art Peter, that is a stone,” says 
Jesus. “Thou art indomitable as this very rock on which 
this city rises. From thy lips has come a great confession 
which shall also be as the rock for durability. Upon it I 
will found My Church. Here, at Czesarea Philippi, a rock- 
built city, shall the first course in the masonry of the tem- 
ple of Eternal truth be laid, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against it. Through all the ages shall thy name, 
Peter, or the Rock, be associated with the firm foundation of 
My Church: and thy confession, which gives Me an author- 
ity never claimed by John, or Elijah, or the prophets, 
shall be the everlasting Rock of ages on which it shall be 
built.” 

Enigmatic as these words are, yet they are, however, pre- 
cise and clear compared with those. that follow. For, ac- 
cording to St. Matthew’s version, Christ then goes on to say 
to the man whom He had but yesterday addressed as Satan, 
«And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth 
shall be loosed in heaven.” Yet these words also are capa- 
ble of a simple explanation. Jesus was now speaking as a 
Jew, in language which no Jew could misunderstand. The 
Jewish Rabbi was credited with a power of binding and 
loosing, in the sense of prohibiting and permitting. In all 


232 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


matters relating to the etiquette of sacrifice, or to cases of 
compensation under the Mosaic law, the Rabbi claimed a 
supreme judicial power. In spite of the Pharisaic insistence 
on the strict letter of the law, to its last jot and tittle, the 
Rabbis judged the cases that came before them on their 
merits, inflicting or moderating punishment as they thought 
fit What Christ really does is nothing more nor less 
than to invest Peter with the power of the Rabbi. He indi- 
cates that with this formal establishment of His kingdom the 
power of the ancient Rabbi to bind or loose is at an end. 
As if to compensate Peter for his great humiliation, Christ 
now shows him that he is a member of a new fraternity more 
august and more enduring than the Judaism which he has 
renounced. That is the real meaning of Christ’s words. 
The best proofs that they do not cover, and were not meant 
to imply, any sacerdotal theory of absolution, is that Peter 
never made the least pretension to such authority ; and even 
if he had it would not have been permitted for an instant in 
a society so democratic as the early Church. So far was 
Peter from becoming the spiritual autocrat of this Church, 
that the balance of authority lay not with him, but with 
Paul, an apostle who had never seen Jesus in the flesh, and 
to whom Christ had never spoken. It is Paul who threatens 
excommunication on those who disagree with him, but Peter 
never once indulges in such language. Those, therefore, who 
found extravagant theories of priestly authority and absolu- 
tion upon these words of Christ to Peter, have to solve a 
problem to which history affords no solution; viz., how it is 
that Peter never claimed this power, never exercised it, and 
tamely let the primacy of Christianity pass from his hands 
to the unauthorized and abler hands of Saul of Tarsus. 
Jesus passed a whole week in Cxsarea Philippi in pro- 
found meditation. ‘The conversations recorded by the Evan- 


BV iN AT CASA Tan AY PEIELP PI ° 233 


gelists are no doubt typical of many similar discussions be- 
tween Him and the disciples. Wandering through these 
groves and olive gardens, as Socrates had wandered in the 
olive gardens on the Eleusinian road, surrounded by his 
friends, Jesus uttered His inmost thoughts in mystic lan- 
guage. A mounting ecstasy possessed His mind, the sacred 
and the sad inebriation of the pre-doomed martyr. The dis- 
ciples as they watched Him were filled with awe and con- 
sternation, alternating with strangely thrillng moments of 
insight and belief. It was in these olive gardens of Czesarea 
Philippi that th» thought of His Deity was born. Dear as 
He was to them in all the intimacies of familiar friendship, 
yet there were moments when they trembled at His touch, 
His glance, His words. It had been so once before, when 
He had come to them across the darkness of the Galilean 
lake, and they had cried out in terror, believing Him to be a 
spirit. Before their eyes the human seemed dissolved; the 
poor appanage of flesh and blood withdrew like a veil, leay- 
ing the wonder of the soul uncovered. And, as if to con- 
firm these astonishing impressions, at the end of the week 
there happened an event that seemed especially designed for 
the strengthening of their faith in this Divine element in 
Jesus, which they had so vaguely apprehended. “He bring- 
eth them up into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured 
before them.” 

The mountain thus described was Hermon, the only high 
and isolated mountain in the neighborhood of Cesarea Phil- 
ippi. Hermon is a mountain of a triple peak, the one snow- 
clad mountain in Palestine. It dominates the entire land, 
and is visible even as far south as Jerusalem itself. It was 
toward evening when Jesus approached it, and St. Luke tells 
us that he went there to pray. This would be in accord with 
all His habits. The solitude and serenity of mountain scen- 


234 ACER SIVOAIN TCL RLS 1 Ee 


ery appealed deeply to Him, and whenever He would be 
alone He fled to the mountains as to a natural sanctuary. 
The scene that now met His eyes may perhaps be best de- 
scribed from the recollections of recent travelers, who agree 
in their descriptions of the exquisite beauty and almost 
unique grandeur of this mountain range. 

Let us picture, then, Hermon itself in all that strange pomp 
of sunset which nowhere reaches such a fine excess as in the 
East. From immemorial time it had been a sacred mountain 
not only to the Jew, but to the Phoenicians and the Greeks 
who had been before them, and to many primitive races who 
had preceded these. On its lower slopes many shrines and 
temples rose, sometimes crowning rocky steeps, sometimes 
hidden in deep ravines; and the memory of these many 
sanctuaries was in the mind of Peter when later on he sug- 
gested that they should build three tabernacles here, as the 
memorials of a perpetual worship. As Jesus and his three 
favorite disciples climbed these lower slopes the first solemn 
obsequies of day were being celebrated. A rose-colored fire 
burned upon the triple peaks, deepening into ruby, and pass- 
ing by a score of swift gradations into violet and purple. 
Far to the southward lay the Sea of Galilee, like an ame- 
thyst in its delicate setting of golden hills. Over the vast 
eastern plain a long “pyramidal shadow slid,” swallowing up 
the city of Damascus and its belts of verdure: “it was the 
shadow of the mountain itself stretching away for seventy 
miles across the plain.” Soon the four pilgrims reach the 
region of the snow, and the gorgeous colors of the sunset 
die away in the deathlike pallor. The stars appear, hanging 
like lamps above the snowy peaks, and before the darknegs 
has time to fall the moon shines out in dazzling splendor. 
Still the pilgrims ascend, till the air grows difficult, and 
sleep falls upon them. The three disciples wrap themselves 


EN BAN aie Ce SR A DATE ET PPh) 236 


each in his cloak and lie down to rest. Jesus goes on alone, 
thrilling with the elation not only of the scene and hour, but 
of His own ecstatic thoughts. Over Hermon gathers a cap 
of dazzling mist, and now the mountain, washed with moon- 
light, glows like silver, and the deep midnight silence reigns. 
Suddenly the disciples wake, startled with a sense of mingled 
joy and terror. They behold Jesus clothed with the glory 
of this wondrous moonlight, so that His face shines, and 
“His raiment is white as the light.” Bemused and won- 
derstruck they hear as it were the murmur of distant voices 
in Divine discourse. The nature of their own conversations 
with the Lord in Cesarea Philippi is recollected, and it 
seems to them they hear the very voices of Moses and Elias. 
Before they can speak, before they can approach the dazzling 
apparition of their Lord, the cloud from the brow of Her- 
mon rolls down like a sheet of light, and from the cloudea 
voice appears to say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I 
am well pleased; hear ye Him.” A shock of terror seizes 
them, and they fall upon the ground, and hide their faces. 
The frail appanage of flesh and blood, which they had al- 
ready seen as the veil through which the Divine Soul of Jesus 
had shone forth, is quite dissolved. The cloud rolls lower, 
and overwhelms them too. They grope for One who seems 
already taken from them, and received in the temple of the 
Highest. Then the cloud passes, and they see no man but 
Jesus only. Wonder, awe, and joy fill all their thoughts. 
They are no longer masters of themselves, and Peter, ever 
the spokesman of their thoughts, can only feel the holiness 
of the place and hour, and suggest the building of three tem- 
ples on the mountain. They dare not even speak of what 
they have seen and heard to their fellow-disciples. When at 
last the day breaks and they descend the mountain it is with 
sealed lips they go; but deep in each heart is the thrilling 


236 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


knowledge that they have stood close to the gate of heaven 
as Jacob did, and have seen in Jesus the first full gleam of . 
that incredible divinity, which they will disclose hereafter to 
a wondering world. 

If we may thus seek to give this extraordinary scene its 
natural setting, it is not because it can be explained away by 
any circumstances of the place and hour. The awfulness of 
midnight on a mountain in its known effect of quickening 
imaginative thought; the sudden descent of a cloud from 
Hermon, commented on by many travelers; the moonlight 
bathing the mystic figure of the solitary Christ, and making 
it appear etherealized and transfigured : all these are intel- 
ligible features of the scene, but they afford no explanation 
that is adequate and final. The truth is that we leave the 
plain ground of rational inference here, as the disciples left 
the roads of Czesarea Philippi when they ascended Hermon, 
and we enter on a realm of vague and sacred mystery. One 
thing at least is clear: a story so incredible to human un- 
derstanding could not have been invented by these men of 
Galilee. Why should they invent a tale, of the utmost con- 
sequence in the history of their Master, which they were for- 
bidden to relate? If they had perceived its real importance 
why should they have represented themselves not as vigilant 
spectators of the scene as we should expect, but as bemused 
and but half awake, with the implication that what they re- 
lated as sober fact was after all but a sort of waking dream ? 
Or, we may ask again, was it possible for such men to invent 
a story so exquisite and wonderful, that it would excite sur- 
prise and admiration in the writings of the highest genius? 
Even had they attempted a deliberate invention, there was 
nothing in Jewish legend to suggest this scene. It is of the 
nature of a myth that it can be easily traced, as a rule, to 
some germ-cell of tradition; but here tradition affords no 


BV Pale) (CAS ARE API ETP BP) o 1287 


clue. A Messiah might, indeed, have been conceived as 
having some spiritual affinity with Moses and Elijah, but 
never as conversing with them on the painful theme of His 
ignominious death. Moreover, the three Evangelists who 
narrate this story do so without a shade of difference in their 
language. They each represent the disciples as stupefied 
by what they saw. They each represent the spiritual drama 
they beheld as transcending all their habitual thoughts of 
Christ, so that no one can be more surprised in reading their 
narration of the scene than were they in witnessing it. We 
may perhaps say that something natural really happened to 
which they gave a supernatural meaning; but this only 
brings us back to the original difficulty of their entire in- 
competence to invent these very features which make the 
scene so astonishing. At this point rational criticism ceases, 
for while it may suggest a doubt, it cannot afford an ex- 
planation. 

But if we read the story in the light of all that had oc- 
curred in Caesarea Philippi, we see it as a final sequence in 
a chain of causes. vesus comes to this remote city for the 
purpose of a spiritual retreat. His days are passed in 
prayer and sacred ecstasy. He is engaged in profound 
meditation on the mystery of Himself. He has reconciled 
Himself to the purpose of a sacrificial death, and is thus 
emancipated from the tyranny of death. The result of this 
emancipation is a great access of spiritual life. The body 
can no longer contain these energies of the spirit. He 
knows Himself an emanation of God; in the “abyssmal 
depth of personality” a voice speaks, assuring Him of im- 
mortal triumph over all His earthly foes. Filled with these 
lofty thoughts, already nearly emancipated from the normal 
limitations of time and space and sense, He goes to Hermon 
at midnight, gathering His soul up in one intense effort of 


238 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


communion with the infinite. What happened on Hermon 
was the outward projection of these inner experiences. He 
finds Himself able for an instant to enter into that spiritual 
world which lies around the little earthly life. If man is in- 
deed a spirit, such an experience, at least in some rare and 
singular instance, should not be impossible to him. It was 
certainly known to St. Paul, who speaks of a period of 
ecstasy so intense that he knew not whether he was in the 
body or out of the body. But Jesus had already overpassed 
the boundaries of the human and knew what it meant to live 
habitually in the unseen. He had merged His will com- 
pletely in the Divine will. As man “dies not wholly but by 
the death of the will,” so he lives not as a spirit save by the 
death of the will. In the hour that man’s will is perfectly 
subdued to God’s, man becomes as God. This hour Jesus 
knew on Hermon. He has become pure spirit, for whom 
earth is no more a prison; and He can converse with 
spiritual presences, and stand undismayed in the splen- 
dor of that eternal world, which is the world of His real 
nativity. 

“To any man,” says a great writer, “there may come at 
times a consciousness that there blows through alli the artic- 
ulations of his body the wind of a spirit not wholly his, that 
another girds him and carries him whither he would not.” 
On Hermon Jesus is uplifted by such a wind of the Spirit. 
In the sudden momentary dissolution of all material bonds 
He pre-dates the experience of death. He foretastes the “ in- 
expressive lightness” and the freedom of a spirit that has 
survived the pang of separation from the body. Like the 
cloud on Hermon, He floats for an instant tar above the 
eross material world upon a tide of splendor. He is as the 
angels of God; he is kin with those pure intelligences who 
dwell in the temple of the infinite. The transfiguration is 


ENE AeA OAR BNO PIT CT PPI. * 239 


thus the visible symbol of the triumph of the spiritual na- 
ture of man over the physical. 

The impression which this extraordinary scene made on 
the disciples was deep and permanent. It was true they did 
not speak of it; it is yet more strangely true that they even 
appear to have forgotten it amid the horrors of the closing 
tragedy. It is not in human nature to maintain itself for 
long at the rare height of its noblest hours. But those 
hours are not forgotten, though they may appear to be so; 
they are as thrilling music heard at intervals below the 
surface trivialities of life, they are as a brighter thread of 
color woven into the grey texture of the commonplace. More 
than thirty years later Peter recorded his impressions of this 
wonderful and sacred night on Hermon. He had learned to 
estimate it rightly. He knew it then as the greatest moment 
he had ever known. “For,” said he, “we have not followed 
cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the 
power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye- 
witnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the 
Father honor and glory, when there came such a voice to 
Him from the excellent glory, This is My beloved Son, in 
whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from 
heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy 
mount.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 
THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 


THE greatest crisis of Christ’s life was now over. The 
Transfiguration marks the beginning of a period of exalta- 
tion which is only closed with His death. The idealist and 
poet of the Galilean Lake, uttering parables and aphorisms 
which irresistibly attract all minds, no more exists. The 
infinite sweetness of His temper is modified by the encroach- 
ment of stern and terrible thoughts. He has passed outside 
human nature; He moves henceforth at a great height above 
it. His relations with His disciples are often strained, and 
the old familiar intimacy has given place to awe. His 
brethren doubt His sanity, and even go so far as to declare 
that He is mad. There are indeed exquisite moments when 
He speaks and acts once more as a poet, and these occur to 
the end; but they daily become more infrequent. An im- 
mitigable flame of Divine ardor consumes Him. He ex- 
presses His thoughts with new and alarming energy. He 
has clothed Himself in the raiment of the Judge, who boldly 
arraigns and condemns the existing forms of society. The 
solemnities and pomps of a day of final judgment hang like 
a lurid cloud over all His thoughts, and He pictures Him- 
self as seated in the heavens or coming with great power 
and glory to conduct the final assize of the human race. 

Let us briefly recapitulate the position of affairs when 
Jesus descends from the snowy heights of Hermon, and sets 
His face steadfastly toward Jerusalem. In Jerusalem itself 
He has had no success, and He knows now that all attempts 

240 


LiberoeR WEE LOsGALILER*. 247 


which He may make to win the stubborn city are foredoomed 
to failure. It is the appointed theatre of His martyrdom ; 
there He will be taken by the elders and the scribes and put 
to death, for it cannot be that a prophet shall perish out of 
Jerusalem. Galilee itself has greatly cooled toward Him. 
Capernaum and Bethsaida, places for which He had a special 
love, receive Him with such indifference or disdain, that He 
is driven to denounce them. From one district bordering on 
the Lake He has been expelled, the whole population be- 
seeching Him to depart out of their coasts. Nazareth itself, 
dear to Him by a thousand memories of childhood and 
youth, has long since affirmed its complete contempt for 
Him. Even Samaria is now hostile to Him. Enemies have 
multiplied, and they are no longer confined to the scribes and 
Pharisees. His words are watched, His deeds are canvassed, 
His every movement is reported to those eager to find a pre- 
text for destroying Him. Herod, encouraged by the ease 
with which he has swept John from his path, desires to kill 
Him. Hitherto His great security had been the favor of the 
populace. The dread of precipitating some insurrectionary 
movement which would provoke retaliation from the Romans 
had held the hands of His enemies. A terrible dilemma 
now meets Him. If He would keep the favor of the people 
He must declare Himself a king; if He rejects the part they 
would assign Him, He at once alienates the popularity which 
is His sole protection against the priestly inquisition at Jeru- 
salem. He is in the most hopeless of all positions—that of 
a revolutionary leader who has failed. It alters nothing in 
the situation to say that He has deliberately failed. He may 
have the best of reasons for such conduct, but they are not 
reasons which the populace will respect or understand. The 
mob asks boldness in its leaders; it will forgive, or even ad- 
mire, an unscrupulous ambition. But the one thing which a 
16 


242 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


mob will not forgive is some honorable scruple in a leader 
which prevents him from accepting the fruits of victory ; this 
they can only regard as absurd timidity or deliberate be- 
trayal. In such a case the estranged and disappointed 
friend becomes the most revengeful enemy ; and this Jesus 
found in that day when the populace itself demanded His 
crucifixion at the hands of Pilate. 

This was the position which met Jesus on His return from 
Caesarea Philippi. He would have been impervious to all 
ordinary human emotion if He had not felt it deeply. No 
sadder thing can happen to a great teacher than to revisit 
the scenes of some conspicuous success, and to find himself 
forgotten. The least vain or selfish of men may fondly hope 
that the good which he has done will be gratefully remem- 
bered. It seems incredible to him that all the infinite ex- 
penditure of tenderness and love, of energy and thought, 
which he has lavished on his work should have left so little 
mark. And perhaps the way in which such a teacher meets 
such hours of disappointment affords the severest and there- 
fore the completest test of the greatness of his character. 
Jesus not merely survives the test, but comes out of it 
triumphantly. He looks with tears upon a recreant Caper- 
naum, but they are tears not of weakness, but of pity. His 
composure is complete, and it takes a new form of almost 
unearthly tranquillity. With all the emblems of defeat 
around Him He speaks of a peace He has which the world 
can neither give nor take away. His sublime confidence in 
Himself rises in the degree of the scorn which the world 
pours upon Him. So far is He from moderating His claim 
to obedience that He announces it afresh in terms that seem 
wildly extravagant. He who had once tolerantly weleomed 
as disciples men of little faith now demands an absolute 
faith which rejects all conditions. Men must love Him more 


THe PANEWELE oe TO GALILEE - 243 


than wife or child, mother or father. They must follow Him 
instantly, and not even return to their homes to bury the 
dead. He who looks back with even one reluctant glance is 
not worthy of Him. All the claims of nature, all the bonds 
of social duty, are dissolved ; He alone presents a truly sa- 
ered claim. Not for nothing does man transcend human 
nature and soar beyond it; henceforth he moves upon a 
lonely height where few can follow him. From the night of 
the Transfiguration Jesus is alone, and evermore alone. In 
hours of sweet relenting, the cloud of glory is withdrawn, the 
heights of solitary rapture are forsaken, and He is again 
pure man, weeping beside a grave, or offering His bosom to 
the weariness of a beloved disciple; but how brief the re- 
spite! He appears, He is lost: with a kind of terror the 
disciples see the transfiguration of the human into something 
higher perpetually renewed, the vanishing of the familiar, the 
expanding of the flame of deity—their Christ ever more and 
more withdrawn from them, till His voice reaches them out of 
some unearthly height, in a language that is hard to under- 
stand. “And,” says Peter, in his one recorded reminiscence 
of these terrible and thrilling hours, “they were in the way 
going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus went before them; and 
they were amazed, and as they followed they were afraid.” 
This exaltation of mind, which never left Jesus after His 
return from Hermon, may well have seemed insanity to those 
who had hitherto regarded Him only as an amiable idealist 
and poet. There can be no doubt that some of these sayings 
which inculeated an absolute rejection of all claims of the 
natural life for His sake did contain a germ of peril which 
bore disastrous fruit. They have become the sanction of 
monasticism. Leaving home and kindred for the sake of 
Christ has been used as the synonym of a cloistral life. The 
praise of those who had rejected marriage for the Kingdom 


244 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of God’s sake, has been construed into the praise of celibacy. 
A seed of asceticism was thus sowed in the early Church 
which no passage of time has been competent to sterilize. 
The meaning of Christ is, however, perfectly clear. Wrought 
into a Divine ecstasy by the passion of sacrifice, He is right 
in insisting that those who would follow Him must them- 
selves be prepared for the greatest sacrifices. The crowds 
who listened with delighted minds to the discourses of the 
Lake need to be assured that an age of martrydom is near. 
He alone is the appointed Judge of men, and men who share 
this terrible belief will naturally count the loss of all things 
light to win His favorable verdict. It is necessary to put 
this truth with passionate vehemence that it may win atten- 
tion at all. No reformer succeeds by asking little of men; 
the more extreme is his demand the more likely is it to meet 
with obedience. The finest natures find a joy in sacrifice 
more inebriating than the fullest joys of pleasure and indul- 
gence. ‘To renounce earthly joy is in itself a higher joy. 
Christ thus speaks in language which reveals profound ac- 
quaintance with the human heart. What is insanity to the 
base is the loftiest reason to the noble. It is true that such 
language cannot be used without risk, but the risk must be 
taken for the sake of the wider good it purchases in the re- 
invigoration of the most unselfish instincts of the human 
heart. That Christ never meant to inculcate an ascetic life 
is clear from the nature of His own life, which pursued its 
course of friendly sociality even to the foot of Calvary. 
What He did desire was to communicate to others His own 
spiritual exaltations, and to make them feel what He had 
felt—that renunciation was the supreme joy. When Peter, 
filled with astonishment at these teachings, replied that at 
least he and his fellow-disciples had left all things for 
Christ’s sake, Christ’s reply is that he had lost nothing by 


ERE PARE WECESTO, GALILEE = 945 


his bargain. He had been more than compensated in the 
world of new affections he had found, and in the world to 
come he would win eternal life. 

This exaltation of mind was necessary to Jesus for the 
consummation of His work. The saying that “whom the 
gods would destroy they first make mad” may surely havea 
higher meaning than that which is commonly attributed to 
it: may it not stand as a debased version of that Divine 
inebriation of the spirit which alone can invigorate the mar- 
tyr to approach the hour of his agony with fortitude? In 
proportion to the gathering signs of defeat the reformer 
needs to be borne aloft on some wave of sublime self-esteem, 
to rely utterly upon himself, to be so assured of the truth of 
his position that he is insensible to reproach, defection, and 
calamity. Never was there a great teacher who faced a 
situation so full of the material for despair as that which 
met Christ in Galilee. The Lake itself, notorious for its 
sudden changes, was the apt symbol of this fickle people, 
who had seen a hundred miracles and had forgotten them. 
The Pharisees, taking advantage of Christ’s absence, had 
sown everywhere the seeds of innuendo, suspicion, dis- 
affection. Perhaps it was this very image which was in the 
mind of Christ, when He drew His daring picture of the evil 
one who came by night and sowed the tares amid the good 
seed of the Kingdom. His disciples, in spite of all His in- 
timate conversations with them, were utterly adverse to His 
journey to Jerusalem. They were full of gloomy prognosti- 
cations, which they took no pains to conceal. It was indeed 
hard to know where He could turn for safety; in the 
tetrarchy of Herod armed men awaited Him, in Jerusalem the 
unanimous malice of the priests. One course was indeed 
open; He might resign His mission. The world could give 
Him nothing; He might have disappeared among the 


24.6 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


mountains as Elijah did, seeking to cultivate in perfect soli- 
tude the high and separated life of the religious mystic. But 
resignation is the last weapon of the weak, and it hurts 
most the hand that uses it. It is the tacit confession of in- 
competence to deal with difficulty. The solitude it wins is 
more often peopled with regrets than fruitful in new incen- 
tives to a new strenuousness of spirit. Christ cannot take 
such a course, because it would mean the disavowal of Him- 
self. He can pursue His way though no disciple follows 
Him; and His exaltation begets in Him a temper of heroic 
courage. When the Pharisees try to play upon His fears, 
they find Him absolutely fearless. With unctuous insincer- 
ity they come to Him, professing a regard for His safety, 
and saying, “Get thee out and pass hence, for Herod will 
kill thee.” His reply breathes the spirit of indomitable 
defiance. “Go ye, and tell that fox,’ He says, “Behold I 
cast out devils, and I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and 
the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must 
walk to-day and to-morrow, and the day following; for it 
cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” 

This exaltation expresses itself at times in language which 
implies a sense of destiny. He speaks as a fatalist of the 
more devout kind, for whom all human events are but God at 
work. He is impressed with the conviction that He is the 
central figure of a Divine drama, full of inevitable sequences. 
He will die, but not by accidental violence, for there are no 
accidents in the Divine order. His life and death have long 
since been arranged to the minutest detail in the council 
chambers of the Almighty. Event after event, as it un- 
folds, with all its sordid aspect of conspiracy or its tragic 
agony of rejection and repulse, is but the vehicle of destiny. 
Things are so because they cannot be otherwise. The ordi- 
nary man is permitted a wide latitude in the ordering of his 


THE PAK WEEE TOO GALILEE. 247 


life, because his movements are of no great importance to 
the world; but not so the extraordinary man, who is set for 
the rise and fall of the world itself. To His unbelieving, 
narrow-minded brethren Christ remarks with sarcasm, 
“Your time is always ready”; but of Himself He says, 
“My hour is not yet come.” He is as one who passes 
through a hostile army, whose swords hang suspended over 
Him, but cannot fall, because the hands that hold them are 
frozen in an iron trance. No man lays hands on Him, be- 
cause His hour has not yet come. He speaks often of a 
high and solitary path which He must tread where none can 
follow Him. His language is grossly misapprehended. It 
is thought at one time that He is meditating suicide. “ Will 
He kill Himself?” is the whispered comment of the Jews. 
The strange fortitude of the mystic and the fatalist may well 
prove incomprehensible to ordinary men. Perhaps some 
sympathy is due to those who listened to these lofty say- 
ings. The ordinary experience of humanity afforded no clue 
to them. ‘They were as unintelligible music floating down 
to them from the clouds. ‘They were the sad and thrill- 
ing utterances of a mind deranged. Genius and heroism 
have often seemed the voice of madness to the feeble and 
the commonplace. 

One fixed idea is constantly expressed in these moods ; it 
is that Jerusalem is His appointed goal. ‘The vision of a 
culminating contest with the scribes and Pharisees never 
leaves Him, and that vision has for background the Holy 
City. Up to this time the superb metropolis of His nation 
has afforded Him no attractions. The splendor of the 
Temple has repelled Him, the character of the people has 
disgusted Him. Nowhere has He been received with so 
little sympathy and tolerance ; nowhere has such stolid in- 
credulity and brutal scorn awaited Him. Yet now, almost 


248 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


in spite of Himself, the bare thought of Jerusalem fascinates 
and thrills Him. His disciples, with a true worldly wisdom, 
would fain remain in Galilee, where at least they have 
achieved some honor and acceptance, and are not made to 
drink those waters of contempt which Jerusalem invariably 
offered to all Galileans. They would even have preferred 
the pagan provinces to Jerusalem. But their remonstrances 
were in vain. Jesus saw with terrible distinctness all that 
would happen to Him at Jerusalem, and yet He could not 
keep away. From these far walls He heard the challenging 
trumpets of His destiny, and it was not in Him to refuse the 
challenge. He is in haste to be gone; He is straitened in 
spirit till this last act of His life is accomplished. It is at 
this point that Jesus parts company with the average re- 
former of society. He displays none of that sagacity which 
teaches the reformer to reserve his energies, to be oppor- 
tunely pliable to circumstance, in order that in the end he 
may win his victory. He is henceforth the pure enthusiast, 
dedicated to supreme sacrifice, rather than the reformer who, 
with a more moderate enthusiasm, weighs his means and op- 
portunities. And out of this intense emotion there is born a 
new feeling for Jerusalem itself, of which the past has given 
no sign. He sighs for it as the noble sigh for the bed of 
heroic death. He longs to cast Himself upon the stony 
bosom of this mother who discards Him. His soul sud- 
denly breaks out in an exclamation of profound love and 
pity, utterly incomprehensible to the Galileans, who had 
every cause to hate the Holy City. “O Jerusalem, Jeru- 
salem,’ He cries, “which killest the prophets, and stonest 
them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gath- 
ered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood 
under her wings, and ye would not.” | 

As if to warn His Galilean converts against that kind 


THE FAREWELL TO GALILEE 249 


of gross misjudgment of heroic lives which counts all suffer- 
ing defeat, Christ devotes His last discourse in Capernaum 
to the discussion of untempered judgments. <A report has 
reached Capernaum of some sanguinary massacre in Jeru- 
salem, in which certain Galileans have perished by the 
swords of the Roman soldiery, even while in the act of sacri- 
fice. Are they to be counted “sinners above all the Gali- 
leans, because they have suffered such things?” Perhaps 
they were fanatics; perhaps simple uncalculating enthusi- 
asts, who had taken no pains to conceal their anger at the 
presence of the Roman eagles in the Temple of David. They 
would henceforth be accounted martyrs, and possibly with 
justice. But if they were to be judged at the tribunal of a 
worldly prudence they were not martyrs, but fools. It the 
Pharisees, who invariably associated every calamity with 
secret wrongdoing, measured such lives, they would declare 
these men to be sinners above all men, because they had 
suffered a doom that few men met. Christ warned His Gali- 
lean friends against these superficial judgments. The solu- 
tion of the mystery of pain is not so simple. It is nothing 
either for or against a man that he endures great misfortunes. 
The heroic never reach their fame except by paths of blood, 
by misfortune and catastrophe. It is a strange theme for a 
last discourse in Galilee, and yet it is full of solemn signifi- 
cance as regards Himself. The time will come when the 
news will reach Capernaum of a far worse tragedy enacted in 
Jerusalem. His friends will hear the fatal tale of One whom 
they regarded almost as a God vilely crucified as a felon. 
Let them then beware of untempered judgments. Let them 
make room in their minds for the thought of an heroic life, 
which becomes heroic by its suffering. Human life is but a 
noisome sty where no perception of the nature of the heroic 
life exists. Thus does Jesus warn them: thus does He 


250 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


stand before them, garlanded, as it were, for sacrifice ; and 
though they know it not, His last word is spoken and they 
will see His face no more. 

By what route Jesus left Galilee we have no means of de- 
termining. It is scarcely probable that He would pass 
through Nazareth; and the likeliest course would be by 
Endor and Nain, and so southward to the district of Sama- 
ria. One discourse, uttered either immediately before or 
during this journey, and one incident which certainly oc- 
curred on the way to Jerusalem, confirm the impression of 
the sterner thoughts which now filled His mind. 

The discourse is the extremely enigmatic one about the 
salt and the sacrifice. “For every one shall be salted with 
fire,” says Jesus, “and every sacrifice shall be salted with 
salt.” The words manifestly refer to the injunction of the 
Levitical law: “And every oblation of the meat-offering shalt 
thou season with salt, neither shalt thou suffer the salt of 
the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat-offer- 
ing.” He who offered a meat-offering to God without salt 
offered a putrid sacrifice, and hence this command. But 
salt was a precious and expensive thing to the Oriental, as it 
still is, and there was a sensible temptation to grudge the 
salt, and thus to insult God by a sacrifice which involved no 
self-denial. Jesus points out that piety without self-denial 
is worthless. To the really religious man religion is every- 
thing ; he will pluck out his eye, he will cut off his hand, he 
will submit to any self-discipline in order to present the 
living, unblemished, and perfect sacrifice of himself. In 
other words, sacrifice is the salt of life, the fire of life, the 
cleansing and the consecrating element of life. Perhaps 
Jesus meant also to imply that there is a certain vital salt of 
integrity and sincerity that gives tone and zest to character, 
and that when this is gone the man has lost his savor, and 


DE BARE WB TOG ARIE . 264 


there is no health in him. But enigmatic as the language 
is, there can be no mistake about its meaning in respect of 
the disciples. They are traveling to the hour of supreme 
sacrifice, and nothing but absolute sincerity can sustain them. 
The pleasant pilgrimages of a popular and welcomed min- 
istry are at an end. Henceforth they will walk on roads of 
fire, leading each in turn to his distant scene of martyrdom. 
The utmost sacrifices they have made in following Christ are 
but trivial compared with that flame of sacrifice which they 
must now enter; and he who shrinks from the severity of 
the cleansing agony is no longer worthy to be called a dis- 
ciple. Awful words indeed to fall upon the startled ears of 
these Galileans; yet it was by these words that the world 
was roused from slumber. Strange as it may seem, yet it is 
true that the religion which makes things light for man is a 
religion instinctively rejected. The religion that scourges 
man most heavily is the one religion that attracts him. 

The incident which occurred in this journey is the familiar 
one of the rich young ruler who desired eternal life. Here 
at last was what appeared an almost visible perfection of life 
and character. The youth claims that he had kept all the 
commandments from his youth, and Christ does not contest 
the claim. He has lived a life of separated and fastidious 
virtue. He is manifestly high-minded, sincere, and capable 
of great enthusiasms. There is a noble restlessness and ar- 
dor in his nature which cannot be satisfied with formal vir- 
tues. He knows “the large and liberal discontent” of the 
true idealist who sighs for the impossible. He desires noth- 
ing less than perfection. Here is a nature that seems pre- 
destined to apostleship. Jesus loves him at sight; never 
had one approached Him so akin in spirit. Yet Christ per- 
ceives instinctively that this ardent nature has not been 
salted with the salt of sacrifice. He has missed the supreme 


252 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


joy of renunciation. Jesus, answering his inmost thought, 
says, “ You desire perfection: behold the price of perfection 
is renunciation. Sell all that thou hast, and give it to the 
poor, and perfection shall be yours. Cut the last mooring 
that binds you to the world and all its pleasant things, and 
in that instant the soul shall find its wings and soar into the 
empyrean of life.” But the price is too great. The words 
of Jesus seem extravagant and harsh. He was “sad at that 
saying, and went away grieved, for he had great posses- 
sions.” Jesus loved him, and yet he went away. In that 
very fact his true character was exposed. He was after all 
but a sentimentalist ; the true heroic fibre was not in him. 
From this hour we may trace in Jesus the growth of a 
sterner temper. His denunciations of the rich become more 
vehement. The tests by which He tries men become more 
uncompromising. He has entered on that last heroic stage 
of enthusiasm, reached by few, when the world has practic- 
ally ceased to exist. “I am from above, ye are from be- 
neath ; ye are of the world, I am not of this world,” is the 
reproach He hurls against His enemies. The doubts and 
dejections known to all reformers are incapable of assailing 
this lofty temper. “The slings and arrows of outrageous for- 
tune” are scarcely felt. The enthusiast moves through the 
brutal strifes of life like those legendary knights whose 
frames were wrought of such ethereal stuff that swords 
pierced them in vain, for the wounds closed instantly, im- 
mortally resisting mortal weapons. If the enthusiast knows 
many pains, he also carries the unfailing antidote of pain in 
his own veins. And so we see Jesus passing to His final 
battlefield, scarcely as man, for He has exceeded the limits of 
the human ; already immortal, for He is superior to death ; and 
the Gospel of Beatitude now gives place to the final and alarm- 
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CHAPTER XIX 
THE UNCHASTE 


WE have already seen that, throughout the life of Jesus 
nothing is more evident than the sympathy which He felt 
for persons who cowered under the stigma of social dishonor, 
and in the closing period of His ministry this sympathy be- 
comes increasingly intense. But it was more than sym- 
pathy, as a vague emotion of pity; it was sympathy with a 
moral basis. If Jesus showed a special and consistent ten- 
derness toward persons whose faults of life were manifest, it 
was because He drew a sharp distinction between sins of 
frailty and sins of temper. Moreover, the distinction which He 
drew was always to the disadvantage of the latter. The Phar- 
isees were certainly more odious to Him than the publicans and 
harlots. His dislike of the elder brother is as plain as His 
lenience of feeling toward the prodigal. His most terrible 


denunciations were addressed not to bad people of notorious 
laxity of life, but to conventionally good people whose mor- 
ality was irreproachable. The commonplace distinctions be- 
tween virtue and vice did not exist for Him; or, if they did, 
they were so modified by His acute perception of the vices 
of the virtuous and the corresponding virtues of the vicious, 
that they were no longer recognizable. 

Hardly anything in Christ’s public ministry wrought Him 
such harm as this peculiar and unpalatable view of sin. 
Men saw Him constantly surrounded by persons of evil repu- 
tation, and they drew their own conclusions. They expected, 
at least, from a teacher of religion an active support of conven- 

253 


954 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


tional morality ; Christ often spoke as the enemy of that moral- 
ity. The distinction between venial and mortal sin is a con- 
venient invention, with a good deal of sound reason to sup- 
port it. Average society is certainly not prepared to treat 
the covetous or ill-tempered man on the same terms as the 
thief or the murderer, although it is perfectly plain that 
without covetousness the thief would not exist, without ex- 
plosions of angry and revengeful feeling crimes of violence 
would not occur. Nor would society account it just to treat 
an imagined act of impurity as a real one. It is one thing 
to defile the theatre of the mind with an obscene drama ; 
quite another to guide the life upon vicious principles. So, 
again, a great deal of callous cruelty and greed may co-exist 
with an outwardly correct moral life; but who would con- 
tend that a man of harsh or avaricious temper deserved that 
kind of reprehension which society visits upon the person of 
profligate behavior? But that was precisely the contention 
of Christ. Sins of temper appeared to Him far more disas- 
trous than sins of frailty. In His alarming system of spir- 
itual pathology, the first resembled a paralysis of vital or- 
gans, the second an attack of fever. Any man may contract 
a fever, and after dreadful wanderings in the realms of delir- 
ious imagination may emerge again into the light of sanity. 
He may lie blind and helpless at the mercy of the flame that 
consumes him, but he may still retain his goodness of heart, 
his sense of right, and even his real passion for integrity. 
But in the growth of evil tempers there is no crisis and no 
cure. They involve not a temporary obscuration of moral 
faculties, but their destruction. They are like paralysis, a 
decay of vital organs. Frailty of the flesh is curable; cor- 
ruption of the spirit incurable. Hence the sin of the Phari- 
see appeared to Christ far more odious and hopeless than 
the sin of the harlot; and if it were possible for society 


EEN CPAs Ee 255 


to weigh grain by grain the evil of human lives in the scales 
of an exact justice, Christ's diagnosis would be found 
correct. 

The historian of Jesus may, however, justly tremble as he 
proceeds to examine these principles, for they are revolution- 
ary in the highest degree. We may have the clearest proof 
that a man of thoroughly inhumane temper, in the course of 
a long life of unscrupulous avarice, inflicts far greater evils 
on society than he could have done by any personal breach 
of chastity. Nevertheless some obstinate and indignant scru- 
ple forbids the thought that avarice is a sin of equal turpi- 
tude with unchastity. We may be perfectly aware that a 
man of austere personal virtue may so conduct his business 
that in the long run it becomes a far direr engine for the 
overthrow of innocence than if he had succumbed to the frail- 
ties of the flesh; but we shrink from expressing such con- 
clusions, for the honorable reason that we fear lest others 
should suppose that we treat lightly forms of sin which in- 
volve much open shame and ruin. We are afraid, and justly 
afraid, lest we reduce sins of personal impurity to the level 
of excusable weaknesses. But Christ would not have given 
a new morality to the world had He acted on these fears. It 
was surely part of the Cross which He bore for men that He 
was constrained to handle and examine things unspeakably 
repugnant to Him, in the same spirit that the great physician 
dissects the roots of a horrible disease that he may find its 
remedy. The first step in all true science is analysis, 
Christ was bound to analyze the human heart before He 
could unfold His scheme of redemptive pathology. With an 
infinite and delicate science, possibly only to One who was 
Himself sinless, He applied the probe to the deepest secrets 
of the human heart. He embodied His discoveries in the 
great principle, that “out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, 


256 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blas- 
phemies; these are the things which defile a man.” All sin 
is thus primarily sin of the will. Whether or no it becomes 
incarnated in the actions is a matter of secondary importance. 
He who looks upon a woman with impure eyes has already 
sinned with her in his heart. Outward rectitude of life af- 
fords us no guarantee of inward purity. Rectitude of life 
and inward baseness may co-exist as in the Pharisee; or on 
the other hand, a frail virtue does not imply a total inca- 
pacity for good. Motivé must be measured as well as deed. 
The direction of the will is of even greater importance than 
the nature of the conduct; for the conduct may be but an 
aberration of the will. A profound and difficult science in- 
deed to explain to sinful men, and no wonder that it aroused 
alarm; yet without it, the incomparable purity and loftiness 
of Christ’s own mind had not been comprehended. 

But we are not left to the subtleties of spiritual science to 
learn these truths; two great stories give them reality and 
moral force. One of these dramas occurs in the house of 
Simon the Pharisee; the other in the courts of the Temple 
itself. 

The story of “the woman who was a sinner” presents cer- 
tain internal difficulties which are not easy of solution. It 
is related thrice, and the scene appears to have been Beth- 
any. ‘The probability is that there were two anointings of 
Christ, one by this woman in the house of Simon the leper, 
and another by Mary in the house of Lazarus, and these sep- 
arate stories are confused in the Gospel narratives. St. Luke, 
in his effort to reduce the memorabilia of Jesus to clearness 
and order, has perhaps carried the process of editing too far, 
and has combined in one narrative features common to each 
incident. We have seen already that he has combined sep- 
arate parables that were similar in theme and based on a 


TN CRAS EE 257 


common ethical idea. The process as applied to this story 
has disadvantages, but St. Luke certainly clears up some 
points left in doubt by the other narratives. He indicates 
unmistakably that Simon was no friend to Christ, and it is 
he who tells us that this woman was a woman of light repu- 
tation. One singular omission—dictated possibly by scru- 
ples of delicacy—we find in each version; we do not know 
the woman’s name. ‘The tradition which has called her Mary 
may, however, be correct, for this was the commonest of Jew- 
ish names. But it is quite certain that tradition is misin- 
formed in naming her Mary Magdalene, as we have already 
seen. On the other hand, if the two anointings took place 
in Bethany, nothing would be easier than to confuse them, 
and this may account for the name of Mary being given to 
this unknown woman. 

The scene, as it is painted by St. Luke, is extraordinarily 
vivid. The banquet at which Jesus is present is a formal 
and perhaps splendid function, arranged in honor of One 
who has become famous and is the idol of the hour. Simon 
belongs to that class of men who are always ready to pay 
court to any kind of success, without in the least sympathiz- 
ing with it, or even comprehending it. At the tables of such 
men all sorts of popular heroes are welcomed—the success- 
ful statesman, the triumphant soldier, the latest poet, the 
newest religious teacher. They are valued for one thing only 
—that they have been able to escape the trammels of medi- 
ocrity. They pass through the whispering rooms, honored 
in the degree of their fame or notoriety ; flattered to-day and 
forgotten to-morrow; exhibited to gratify the vanity of their 
entertainer, but never really treated as guests; and sharply 
criticized even by those who load them with noisy adulation. 
Simon was such a social entertainer, but he was not a host. 
He felt no real respect or reverence for Christ. He was too 

17 


258 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


clumsy or too careless even to conceal his real contempt for 
Christ under the forms of ordinary courtesy. And there are 
also signs that the whole occasion was part of a stratagem to 
entrap Christ, to place Him in a false position, and to com- 
promise both His reputation and His influence. 

The means by which this piece of astute malignity was to 
be achieved was a woman. She could scarcely have been 
present but at the invitation of Simon himself. She came 
for a specific purpose: it was her trade to attend such ban- 
quets, bringing with her fragrant oils and essences to anoint 
the hair and brow of the guests. At formal banquets of this 
kind it was the custom of the Romans to introduce their fair- 
est slaves, and Simon, in his pride of wealth, was merely imi- 
tating the manners of the conquerors of his country. For 
the woman herself he felt nothing but contempt. She was a 
woman “who was a sinner,” a beautiful daughter of shame ; 
but that was her own affair. Jt was not his duty to attempt 
her reclamation, still less to shield his guest from what he 
himself would have considered the degradation of her touch. 
It was enough for him that her beauty was conspicuous, and 
that it added some charm and distinction to his banquet; 
who and what she was in her private lite was nothing to 
him. But, he cynically reflected, by her means he could con- 
trive a situation deeply compromising to his guest. It would 
be her duty to anoint the head of Jesus; every one would 
see her play her part; if Jesus were indeed a prophet 
He would know what manner of woman it was that touched 
Him, and would resent her touch; if not, Simon’s banquet 
would long be remembered for its complete exposure of the 
prophetic claims of Christ. So far it is easy to follow the 
thoughts of Simon—the thoughts of a hard, proud, cynical 
man of the world; of a Pharisee who can stoop to any mean- 
ness to humiliate an antagonist whom he both hated and de- 


THE: UNCHASTE 259 


spised ; of a born plotter accustomed to the devious ways of 
intrigue, and incapable of any generosity of feeling when 
once his rancor is aroused. 

But all these crafty calculations are destined to be over- 
thrown by something which lies quite outside the scope of 
Simon’s gross imagination. This woman, full of gaiety, and 
loveliness, and youth, draws near the long divan on which 
the guests recline, to fulfil the duties of her calling. She is 
all smiles ; she knows her beauty, she is conscious of the ad- 
miration it attracts, she is glad to find herself conspicuous, 
and there is no thought of shame or sadness in her mind. 
She approaches Christ with careless grace, and behold she 
stands suddenly arrested as by some unknown force, silent 
as a statue, with all her smiles frozen on her mouth. Who 
could suppose that this woman, whose sad experience of life 
went far beyond her years, would be thus affected, abashed, 
and overwhelmed before Simon’s humble Guest? Who 
could suppose that she, famous for her beauty, should sud- 
denly dissolve in love and tears before this Nazarene, in 
whom there is no beauty that He should be desired? Who 
could imagine that, without a single word said by Christ, her 
hands should begin to tremble at their task, and that she 
should shudder with a sense of guilt? Yet soit was. His 
clear, calm, loving eyes rest upon her in surprise, in pity, in 
comprehension of her character and mode of life. She is 
humiliated and rebuked, yet so tenderly that the torture of 
her pain is almost blissful. She is abashed, she is thrown 
into confusion, and the great deeps of her heart are breaking 
up. What does it all mean, this distress, this bitter shame, 
this soft flame of love which passes through her, dissolving 
and transforming all it touches? And in an instant she 
knows, and falls as one stricken with a mortal wound at the 
feet of Jesus. She is a sinner, and this Man is One who has 


260 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


never known the stain of sin. Simon and his guests, the 
feast, the occasion, the attention she attracts—all are for- 
gotten, and she would fain hide herself from the mute inter- 
rogation of that gentle and majestic face. She is washing 
the feet of Christ with tears, and wiping them with the hairs 
of her head. The Eternal Child, who sleeps in every 
woman’s heart, is alive once more, and she feels the child’s 
exquisite humility, and passionate desire of love and pardon. 
She makes no confession of her sin, but her tears are her 
confession; and while she sobs in pure abandonment of 


grief, she 


‘in the darkness o’er her fallen head, 
Perceived the waving of His hands that blest.” 


And then amid the silence of the room the voice of Jesus 
speaks: “Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee.” And 
Simon, not knowing what to think, but still full of pride and 
scorn, replies, “ Master, say on.” 

The discourse which follows is an exposition of that 
alarming spiritual pathology which has been already out- 
lined. Christ points out that there are sins of love, and sins 
of lovelessness; Mary illustrates the one, and Simon the 
other. Mary was a sinner; but if we recall again the signifi- 
cant analogy of the lovely female slave in a great Roman 
household, we can readily imagine that Mary was far from 
being brutalized by a coarse excess of vice. Perhaps no one 
had taught her better; none had pointed her to a loftier way 
of life; she had done in thoughtless love of admiration what 
a thousand others did, and on all sides she saw a state of 
things which not only did not rebuke her conduct, but en- 
couraged it. And, evil as her mode of life was, yet it had 
not killed the possibilities of tender and affectionate feeling. 
People do not alter their entire natures in a moment, and the 


THE UNCHASTE 261 


profound sentiment of love that fills the heart of Mary in 
the presence of Christ indicates that the natural capacity of 
love was strong in her. Let us say the worst we can of such 
a life as hers, yet we must admit that she had not been male- 
volent, nor cruel, nor harshly selfish in her sins. But Simon, 
proud of a superior decorum, had never been anything but 
cruel and loveless in his temper. He had employed this 
woman, simply as a useful inferior creature, to fix an insult 
on his guest. He had spoken no word of kind and grave re- 
buke to her, nor had thought it his duty, pious as he claimed 
to be, to seek to save this lost sheep of the house of Israel. 
His harshness of temper had betrayed itself in his treatment 
of his guest. His mind was so filled with malice, so fixed 
upon the diabolic climax of his plot, which was the public 
anointing of Jesus by a woman of notorious ill-fame, that he 
had violated the elementary rites of courtesy and hospitality 
themselves. There was no water for the feet; no kiss of 
welcome. Jesus is made to understand that though He may 
be tolerated as the idol of the hour, He must not presume 
upon the friendship of His host. But Mary, coming as a 
hireling to the feast, had shown a far more magnanimous 
heart than the giver of the feast. Soiled and foolish as she 
may have been, yet the reverence for goodness has not died 
in her, and the freshness and poignancy of her emotions are 
not dulled. If we may picture Jesus coming wayworn and 
dusty to her doors, to eat with her, as He had often ate with 
publicans and sinners, we may be sure that His welcome 
would have been sincere and genuine. In the house of the 
woman who was a sinner there wouid have been water for 
His feet, and He would have met with those manifold and 
delicate attentions by means of which Mary would have 
shown that sinner as she was, yet she felt the honor of His 
presence. It had often been so: sinners received Him 


262 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


gladly, while the reputedly religious showed Him at best but 
a cold and grudging hospitality. Therefore it is upon the 
temper of Simon and men like him that Jesus comments. It 
shows a bad heart, as Mary’s conduct shows a good heart. 
There is an atoning power in love which covers many faults, 
but the worst of all faults is lovelessness. Lovelessness is 
the ruin of the world. It is by men lke Simon that the 
worst wrongs are inflicted on society. In depth and obdur- 
acy his sin is far worse than the worst of Mary’s, and he 
had greater need to wash the feet of Jesus with tears than she 

Some idyllic grace lingers in the story of Mary; the per- 
fume of her ointment has indeed filled the world. But in 
the second story which illustrates Christ’s treatment of the 
unchaste, evil is seen in its most repulsive aspect. A woman 
is brought to Him, against whom the proof of adultery is ab- 
solute. Against this sin society in all ages has indignantly 
arrayed itself, because it is a sin which loosens the very 
foundations of the social order. The law of Moses gave its 
verdict against it with relentless emphasis: “She shall be 
stoned to death.” If there was any question on which Christ 
might have been expected to side with the Pharisees, this 
was the one. There seemed to be no possibility of escape. 
How could a great religious teacher avoid condemning an 
offence that is so odious in itself and so socially disastrous ? 
For every conceivable reason, especially those reasons con- 
nected with public morality, with His own reputation, and 
with His religious mission, it seemed absolutely necessary 
that He should condemn this woman. Yet Christ will not 
clo so. 

One reason for this reluctance is plain in the nature of the 
narrative. The whole scene was pre-arranged; it was one 
of the many spiteful plots of the Pharisees to put Him in 
the wrong and compromise Him. They begin by stating 


THE UNCHASTE 263 


what the law of Moses is, and then ask, “ But what sayest 
thou?” assuming that Christ will contradict Moses, and 
thereby give them a pretext for bringing Him before the San- 
hedrim. So much is incontestable, and Christ would have 
been justified in answering, “ Every public man has the right 
to defend himself against a base and malicious plot. You 
claim to be the followers of Moses; go then to Moses, but 
do not make Moses a partner in a plot which is meant to 
gratify your revenge against Me. Who made me a judge or 
a divider over you?” Or He might have taken yet higher 
ground, and have exposed the whole incident as a kind of 
wicked farce. They, the leering eager knaves, had no real 
abhorrence for this woman’s sin. She and her sin were 
nothing more than pawns in the game of partisan hatred in 
which they were engaged. Had they been good and pious 
men, genuinely shocked and pained by the iniquity which 
they had witnessed, Christ might have spoken with them ; 
but had they been such men they would never have dragged 
this poor humbled creature into His presence at all. Or, 
again, Christ might have claimed that a great teacher has a 
right to his silences. It is not every question that can be 
answered wisely, and there are times when silence is expedi- 
ent. But the fact remains that the case cannot go by de- 
fault. The thing is done; Christ is face to face with this 
wretched woman; and as He stands there in the early sun- 
light which floods the Temple court, this spectral evil, this 
horror of the world’s hungry and unsatisfied carnality con- 
fronts Him. like the toad within the heart of stone, as one 
of our great poets tells us, lust sits in the very centre and in- 
most knot of being, 
‘¢ Aye, and shall not be driven out, 


Till that which shuts him around about 
Break at the very Master’s stroke.” 


264 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


But Christ is the very Master, and cannot refuse the task. 
And so at last Christ both speaks and acts. He stoops and 
writes upon the ground, ashamed of the shamelessness both 
of the accusers and the accused. And then He speaks, but 
in language so strange and searching, so revolutionary too, 
that after many centuries the world has failed to comprehend 


it. “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first 
stone. . . . . I condemn thee not. Go, and sin no 
more.” 


The moral antithesis is the same as in the previous story. 
Great as is the sin of this woman, yet is it greater than the 
bitter malignancy of feeling in the hearts of these men who 
are her accusers? But Christ carries His spiritual pathol- 
ogy a stage further still. He lays down a new law, that only 
the sinless have the right to punish sin. This is a revolu- 
tionary principle indeed. The philosopher will at once re- 
tort, and not only the philosopher, but the man of average 
common sense, “ But we must take society as we find it, and 
if you wait till you can find a man without sin to be the ex- 
ecutioner of sin, justice would never get done at all.” Jus- 
tice—but is it justice or injustice when the guilty punish the 
guilty? And as for codes of law, is it not true that they are 
framed in falsity, since they display little sense of what is 
truly sinful, and consequently strike hardest at those who 
least deserve punishment, and afford a manifold escape for 
those who most deserve it? Ideal justice can only be ad- 
ministered by those who are themselves just; purity alone 
is competent to judge impurity ; but since in the general cor- 
ruption of society the absolutely just, the immaculately pure, 
are hard to find, such acts of punishment lie beyond the 
competence of men. 

Does Christ mean us to imply, then, that upon the whole 
the judicial system of society is a failure, because society 


TOE ON CHAS PE 265 


could exist better without judicial punishment than with it? 
This certainly appears to be Christ’s meaning. He had al- 
ready taught the same doctrine in terms of startling em- 
phasis, when He counselled His disciples not to take advan- 
tage of the law even in a just cause. Before we condemn 
such counsel as anarchic it is at least worth inquiring 
whether punishment really achieves the one end that can 
justify it, which is the reclamation of the criminal. Clearly 
we do not make a man less a thief by sending him to gaol, 
or our enemy less our enemy by summoning him before the 
magistrates. On the contrary, prison usually makes the 
thief more of a thief, and the punished enemy is yet more 
our enemy. If Christ, therefore, counsels forgiveness in- 
stead of punishment, it is because forgiveness is more likely 
to succeed as a remedy for evil than force. Punishment, 
even though it be never so just, and never so fairly admin- 
istered, has never once in the history of the world proved a 
cure for sin; on the contrary, the ages marked by the utmost 
severity of their penal codes have always been the ages when 
crime was most abundant. Through many generations Is- 
rael stoned the adulteress, in obedience to the law of Moses ; 
but they could not stone adultery out of the human heart. 
Why not give love a chance, then? Why not try to soften 
the heart of the sinner by pity rather than harden it by ret- 
ribution? Why not say to this poor woman: “It was all 
so sad, and mad, and bad, and you know it as no other can. 
Your heart burns with the sense of infinite degradation. 
You are so humbled that it would not be difficult to die. 
But instead of accepting death, which indeed cuts the knot 
in all this coil of shame, go home and do this yet more dif- 
ficult thing: live, repent, and sin no more.” That is Christ's 
remedy, and it is a real remedy. Her accusers may stone 


her, and leave the dishonored body huddled in its blood be- 


266 THE AMAN Ch BIS i fesus 


neath the pitiless sunlight, but they will not have stoned the 
adultery out of her protesting heart. Forgive her, and a 
new woman is created in her, who goes away to sin no more. 
To treat her thus is to redeem her; to treat her in any other 
way, to deepen her degradation and confirm her ruin. 

And in yet one other thing Christ revolutionizes our no- 
tions of justice. He is quick to recognize that this woman, 
odious as she may seem, is nevertheless a victim. The sin 
she did was only hers in part, but the punishment is to be 
hers alone. How significant of that false morality which 
rules the world is the action of these men, who are so eager 
to stone a guilty woman, but have no word to say about the 
guilty man! Him they exculpate, her they treat as beyond 
all pardon; and such is still the practice of society. But 
Christ, by His conduct, reverses this partial verdict, shifts 
the centre of gravity, puts the crown of infamy on the right 
brows, and stands beside this crushed and cowering crea- 
ture as the implacable avenger of the wrongs of women. He 
says in effect, “ You have brought me a fallen woman; where 
is the fallen man? You have brought me a wronged woman ; 
where is he who did the wrong? Are ye indeed unfallen ? 
With God there is no respect of persons, still less of sexes. 
Let him that is without sin of thought or act cast the first 
stone.” The effect of that speech was terrible and immedi- 
ate. Hardened as these men were, yet they could not but 
admit what all rational men admit if they will reflect—that 
the only equitable basis of society is that which puts men 
and women on precisely the same moral terms. Christ in- 
vited them to stand beside this woman, if they dared ; to lift 
up their eyes to meet His searching glance, if they could ; 
and to answer whether in their hearts they could say that 
justice would be done in the death of this woman while the 
worse criminal went unscathed. And they could not reply. 


Gl ina NOR ass Lis 267 


“They which heard it, being convicted by their own con- 
science, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even 
unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman 
standing in the midst.” 

The Pharisees were not men used to giving up an argu- 
ment without a struggle. In many a previous encounter 
with Christ they had stood their ground with thorough Jew- 
ish obstinacy, and had been too proud to own themselves 
defeated. But there are times when argument is of no avail, 
because it is not a mental but a moral crisis which over- 
whelms men. They are overtaken by the fierce lightning of 
Heaven, and have no time to run for shelter. The light that 
shines upon them is so vivid, so searching and tremendous, 
that their whole life is illumined by it, and they are forced 
to see what they least desire to see. When a great modern 
dramatist would depict these hours of intense self-revelation 
he does so by a series of highly imaginative symbols. The 
wretched man who has wasted his life in extravagance and 
vanity hears upon the mountain-side wailing voices of little 
children, which cry to him, “ We are thoughts: thou shouldst 
have thought us!” Withered leaves sweep past him on the 
accursed air, murmuring, “We are waitch-words: thou 
shouldst have planted us!” Music, full of ineffable regret, 
sighs on his ears, “ We are songs: thou shouldst have sung 
us”; and the very dewdrops on the mountain-side are tears 
of pity that were never shed. It was the peculiar power of 
Christ to make men feel these keen regrets, not by elaborate 
images, but by single words. He speaks so quietly that 
men think it is their own hearts that speak. He suggests 
conclusions which we imagine are our own. He does so in 
this case, and no one can study Christ’s treatment of the un- 
_ chaste without feeling how right He is. Even the Pharisees 
felt it. They realized that the woman they had accused had 


268 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


become their accuser; the Christ they would have snared 
had become their judge. Their silent departure from the 
scene, each with bowed head and fearful heart, was the ad- 
mission that the new principles of justice enunciated by 
Christ were the only true principles. ‘The songs they might 
have sung, the thoughts they might have thought, they heard 
that day upon the lips of Christ, and they knew them for the 
loftiest truth that man can know. 

Sooner or later the world must accept these revolutionary 
principles of Christ, if soeiety is to live. Christ spoke too 
early by two thousand years. He Himself admitted that He 
had much to say which the world could not bear as yet. In 
spiritual vision, as in physical vision, “there is a gradual 
adaptation of the retina to various amounts of light.” We 
must not despair because this process is so gradual that it 
appears almost imperceptible. It is a dangerous error to 
remit any social idea of Christ, however startling, to the 
category of “charming impossibilities.” As the world 
learns, by the constant failure of its judicial codes, the folly 
of punishment as a means of repressing crime, it may come 
to see that forgiveness is a better remedy. As it reaps the 
fearful aftermath of war, it may become suspicious of the 
doctrine that armed force is necessary for the welfare of so- 
ciety. As it is confronted more and more with its own in- 
justices, it may prefer a general amnesty to wrong to meth- | 
ods of government which create fresh wrong for every wrong 
they crush. Finally, illumined and enriched through its 
illusions, the world may come to see that love alone is the 
one vital principle by which society can thrive. Two thou- 
sand years of experiment and error will then seem a light 
price to have paid for that golden age which will begin when 
man at last is brought to realize that “love worketh no ill to 
his neighbor ; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” 






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CHRIST BEARING THE CROSS 
Attributed to Giorgione (1477-1510) 


CHAPTER XX 
THE FULLER EXPOSITION OF SOCIAL TRUTHS 


THE final portion of the ministry of Jesus may be traced 
with tolerable accuracy. He left Galilee in the October of 
the last year of His life, in order to be present at the Feast 
of Tabernacles in Jerusalem, remaining in Jerusalem until 
the Feast of Dedication, which took place in December. He 
then departed into Perea, returning to Bethany, at the risk 
of His life, in order to raise Lazarus from the dead. Imme- 
diately after this event He retired to the secluded district of 
Ephraim, which lay about fifteen miles north of Jerusalem. 
“Jesus walked no more openly among the Jews, but went 
thence into a country near to the wilderness, into a city called 
Ephraim, and there continued with His disciples.” A brief 
journey through the familiar districts of Samaria and Galilee 
followed. In the beginning of April He arrived at Bethany, 
and six days later He was crucified by the order of Pontius 
Pilate. 

The crowning significance of this final section of Christ's 
life is curiously attested in the construction of the Gospels. 
If we take the Transfiguration as marking the sublime pref- 
ace to the closing scenes, we find that the greatest teachings 
of Christ happened after this event, and from this point we 
have a narrative of much greater fulness and detail. To the 
acts and teachings of this last six months Matthew devotes 
one-third of his entire Gospel, Mark nearly one-half, Luke 
more than one-half, and John no less than three-fourths. 
Each evangelist thus betrays his consciousness that it was in 

269 


270 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the climax of His life that Christ was best known. All that 
had gone before was preliminary and prelusive. His thoughts 
now take a final form, His views of the world and society are 
vindicated by experience, His verdicts are decisive. 

These last utterances of Christ are mainly concerned with 
Himself and His redemptive mission; with the fuller expo- 
sition of social truths; and with the idea of a final judgment. 
We may postpone the consideration of the first of these top- 
ics, because the narrative of the last days is its completest 
exposition; and of the last, because the social teachings are 
naturally precedent of the teachings upon judgment. By the 
social teachings of Christ we mean those counsels which 
aimed at a fresh construction of society. It was with such 
teachings that Christ opened His career. The whole Ser- 
mon on the Mount is an impeachment of society. His own 
life and conduct is a yet stronger impeachment. He is 
brought into contact, at every point in His ministry, with two 
systems of society, the Jewish and the Roman, each of which 
He finds is composed of elements which are hostile to human 
happiness. The one is based upon religion, yet so com- 
pletely misinterpreted religion that its whole spirit is harsh 
in the extreme; the other is based upon a frank materialism, 
in which the spirit of religion has no part. Hach had suc- 
ceeded in establishing a tyranny under which man was 
crushed. The Roman especially had built up a world-wide 
tyranny, which his own truest philosophers were powerless 
to resist. ‘The very power of protest had been silenced. A 
weight of horrible monotony oppressed the entire ancient 
world. The life which we see at a distance as so gay and 
splendid was in reality full of that peculiar dreariness which 
attends the loss of high ideals. Wise men felt that the whole 
social system was in decay, without being able to put their 
finger on the root of the disease ; common and ignorant men 


Bar Gotti ON Or SOCUNESUR TU PHS) OF 


felt it equally, and suffered in silence. Christ read the prob- 
lem with a clearer eye. He combined in Himself the quali- 
ties of the mystic and the man of action. As a mystic He 
possessed that rare faculty of detachment from the world, by 
means of which a sober and impartial judgment of the world 
is rendered possible. As a man of action, equally compas- 
sionate and daring, He was bound to propose remedies for 
an evil that oppressed His own spirit. What were these 
remedies which He proposed ? 

They were three; the first of which was the re-establish- 
ment of society not upon a basis of individual assertion, but 
of social service; not on pride, but humility ; not on the hope 
of immediate or gross reward, but on the exceeding great re- 
ward which virtue finds in its own exercise, and the felicity 
which is its crown in after worlds. He swept with one com- 
prehensive glance the whole Roman civilization, and said to 
His disciples “So shall it not be among you.” At the apex 
of that civilization stood Cesar, deranged by the “vertigo of 
omnipotence” ; at the base lay crushed a multitude of slaves, 
impotent and hopeless. No one lived a life of reasonable 
simplicity or wise contentment. Ostentation and ambition 
ruled the world. Rome had turned the world into a theatre 
and a camp: an alternate arena of vanity and cruelty; and 
that appeared to be the one result which her social system 
had achieved. All men were infected with the mania of 
greatness, power, and the love of wealth. Proconsuls, satraps, 
panders, marched across the world, each with his dream of 
sudden fortune, banquets, triumphs, adulation, and perhaps 
a throne. The very slave hoped to reach by his servility a 
goal he could not gain by manly virtue. And yet, amid the 
roaring vortices of this Maelstrom of materialism, men had 
sense enough to know that they were whirled upon an end- 
less circle of disgust and weariness. No one was happy, and 


272 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


most conspicuous in misery was Cesar himself. No one 
could be happy until the spirit of social service supplanted 
this mad, insensate passion of social ambition. “So shall it 
not be among you; but whosoever will be great among you, 
let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chiefest, 
shall be servant of all. For even the Son of Man came not 
to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His hfe a 
ransom for many.” 

The second remedy was human brotherhood. There can 
be no doubt that Christ seriously contemplated the recon- 
struction of society upon principles of pure benevolence. We 
have already seen how strong was this conviction on the part 
of Christ in His treatment of the unchaste; but it was illus- 
trated in many other ways, and from time to time was enun- 
ciated with a startling energy of phrase. When Peter asks 
if he is to forgive his brother seven times, Christ replies that 
he is to forgive him “until seventy times seven’—that is, 
without limit. Men are not to judge one another lest they 
be judged. ‘The Mosaic law had failed to build up a virtuous 
society, and so had all law. It was a fallacy, therefore, to 
suppose that a severe administration of even just law was a 
panacea for the diseases of society, since legal systems were 
unable even to afford a real protection to society. The one 
guarantee of social happiness was love, manifesting itself in 
a widely diffused sense of brotherhood. ‘To love one’s neigh- 
bor as himself meant the keeping of the law, since he who 
loved his neighbor would be incapable of the spirit of covet- 
ousness and envy, and yet more incapable of crimes wrought 
against the property, the person, or the peace of his neigh- 
bor. | 

But from what source did nine-tenths of all the social 
crimes of the world spring? Christ answered unhesita- 
tingly, “ Hither from the desire of wealth, in the narrowness 


Post OSTELON OF SOCUME WN UTES \ 278 


of aim which it induces; or from the possession of wealth, 
in its frequent sterilization of natural sympathies; or from 
the misapplication of wealth, as an engine of pride, oppres- 
sion, and vainglory, and a means of luxury which enervated 
and destroyed the soul.’ Christ found by experience that 
wealth, as a rule, was a fearful obstacle to the reception of 
His gospel. There were many notable exceptions; quite 
enough to deter Christ from any general denunciation of 
rich men asa class. An unqualified denunciation of wealth 
is impossible to the sober thinker who perceives how often 
it is won by admirable qualities, used with a wise modera- 
tion of personal desires, and applied to the general good of 
the community. But there can be no doubt that a society 
governed by a love of wealth is capable of any crime. Nor 
can there be much doubt that wealth more often proves a 
curse than a blessing to its possessor, because it fosters a 
sense of irresponsibility, it isolates its possessor from the 
ordinary experience of life, it constitutes a new caste, full of 
arrogance ; and, in the degree that it is sought with vehem- 
ence, and held with greed, it kills the finer sentiments. 
Therefore Christ’s third remedy for the diseased society in 
which He moved was to enforce the truth that wealth had 
duties as well as privileges. He did not contemplate the 
abolition of wealth, although all His teachings advocated a 
simple mode of life; but He insisted that the only way by 
which the rich man could save his soul alive was by sharing 
his wealth. The drastic revolutions which strip men of 
their wealth never leave the world the better for their 
violence, because in the end all that they effect is a transfer- 
ence of wealth from one class to another; from a class 
which misused its privileges of yesterday to one that will 
assuredly misuse the same privileges to-morrow. The only 
rational and lasting revolution is achieved when wealth is 
18 


274 CHE MAN CHRIST LESS 


held in stewardship from God, for the general good of men; 
and wealth is never perilous to its possessor, or is in peril 
from the violent resentment of the destitute, until it recol- 
lects its privileges alone, and ignores its duties. 

These conclusions Christ expressed, as was His manner, 
in parables. We have three of these; one is the difficult 
parable of the unjust steward; another the parable of the 
talents; the last the parable, or rather the great spiritual 
drama, of Dives and Lazarus. In these stories we have 
the fullest exposition of the social principles which Christ 
inculeated. 

The parable of the unjust steward is difficult because it 
appears to be an encomium uttered upon a thoroughly cun- 
ning and unscrupulous man. The steward has been un- 
faithful to his trust, for he has wasted the goods of his lord. 
Ruin threatens him, and he sees no means of averting it, 
until he hits upon an expedient equally novel and astute. 
He is a clever rogue, and his actions are described with a 
kind of humor which would be greatly relished by men of 
the world. Seeing nothing but beggary before him, he pro- 
ceeds to ingratiate himself with his master’s debtors, by re- 
mitting their obligations upon his own authority. He closes 
the account of the man who owes a hundred measures of oil 
by writing off half his debt, and the man who owes a hun- 
dred measures of wheat has his bill made out for four score 
measures only. He acutely argues that by such a welcome 
compromise he will make these men his friends ; and they 
will also be friends completely in his power, because they 
have become partners in his own fraud. When he is ex- 
pelled from his position these men must needs receive him 
into their houses. They dare not refuse hospitality to one 
who has bought their silence, who holds the proof of their 
dishonesty, and is prepared to expose them if they prove re- 


EXPOSEVION OP SOCIAL“~TRUTHS’ 275 


calcitrant. In plain language the man is a thief, and in 
league with thieves; but his scheme is so astute that, when 
it becomes known, his master himself cannot refuse that kind 
of admiration which honest people often feel for the man- 
ceuvres of the brilliant rogue. His lord commended the un- 
just steward for his worldly wisdom ; his sense of humor 
being so tickled by the cleverness with which he had 
been cheated that he was reconciled to the loss he 
suffered. 

This story seems unpromising material enough for the 
basis of any kind of moral teaching; but we must recollect 
that the rule already laid down for the interpretation of pro- 
verbs applies to parables also, viz., that in such utterances a 
point is overstated, and all qualifications are rejected, in 
order to put emphasis upon some particular truth. The 
point on which Christ lays stress is the worldly wisdom of 
the man. He had the sense to forecast the future and pre- 
pare for it. He was free from that peculiar besetment of the 
rich—the belief that wealth will last forever. He even had 
some sense of the value of generous deeds, although he ex- 
pressed it by doubtful means; for by timely acts of kind- 
ness he makes friends for himself against the day of calam- 
ity. In these things the rogue acts with superior acumen 
and insight; he is wiser in his generation than the children 
of light. Christ appears to say: “If a man who is thus 
thoroughly unscrupulous has the prudence to act with a 
view to the future, how is it that the professed children 
of light live with so little thought of that more solemn future 
which they name Eternity? How is it that they use their 
wealth without a single serious thought of that judgment of 
wealth, as a trust and stewardship, which will come in the 
hour when they meet their God?” The stewardship of 
wealth is thus the keynote of the parable. The word Mam- 


276 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


mon, which Christ uses, is a Syrian word which means 
wealth ; and He says men cannot serve both God and Mam- 
mon. Men must break with God before they can serve 
Mammon. And the crying evil of these great civilizations 
which Christ condemned was that they were based on the 
love of wealth. Conventional piety did nothing to restrain 
this love. The Jew and the Pagan alike treated wealth as 
the perquisite of his own happiness, not as a means of pub- 
lic good. In one way only could this evil be cured: the rich 
man must see his presert life in relation to Eternity. He 
must count himself the steward of wealth: and if an unjust 
steward could regulate his conduct by the vision of the 
future, how much more should the good steward act with a 
constant reference to the final judgments of God! In other 
words, only as wealth is seen in the light of eternal things, 
with all the solemn implications of the brevity of this life, 
and the need for doing good in a life that is so brief, can 
wealth be safely held, and become not a means of selfish 
pleasure, but a noble self-discipline to its possessor; not a 
curse to society, but a blessing, and a means of good. 

The same note is struck again, but with more decision, in 
the great parable of the talents. The central idea on which 
the parable is based is that man, whatever be his social 
state, is the depository of a Divine trust. The Kingdom of 
Heaven is like a man who went into a far country, leaving 
his property to be administered by his servants. Man is 
thus the vicegerent of God; and time and talent, genius and 
power, every form of human gift and opportunity, form part 
of the wealth of God which is adventured in man. The one 
supreme business of man in the theatre or mart of human life 
is to be the faithful custodian of the trust reposed in him. A 
society conducted on such principles could not fail to be a 
wisely ordered, harmonious, and happy society, because each 


BPAVOslvViONe Or SsOClAR TRUTHS 727% 


of its units would contribute his quota of energy and effort 
to the common store; a society conducted on any other 
principles is bound to sink by its own selfishness, and to cor- 
rupt by its contempt of individual responsibility. 

But this is not all. Contempt of individual responsibility 
often springs from a morbid sense of the littleness of human 
life itself. Why struggle to do great things for a world that 
is only ours on the terms of the insecurest tenancy, a world 
which in any case we quit so soon? ‘This was the argument 
of the man with the one talent. He did not deem human 
life worth a struggle; he was a deserter from the ranks of 
labor; he hid his talent in the earth, assuming that the 
world could have no just cause of complaint against him 
simply because he abstained from toils which were distaste- 
ful to him. But he who thus evades the arduous conscrip- 
tion of life is not only an enemy of society, but his own 
worst enemy. He is his own worst enemy, because it is 
labor which develops character, and he who refuses from any 
selfish cause this means of development soon deteriorates. 
Life without duties is not life at all. He who does the hum- 
blest duty faithfully has in the same instant proved his right 
to live, and even to live eternally. For the most striking 
thing in this parable is Christ’s teaching of the immortality 
of all capacity. Christ lifts the curtain from the after-world 
only to reveal that world not as rest or finality, but as a state 
of constant and immitigable progress. The stress of being 
and of effort is not relaxed at death, but is given fresh scope. 
Man does not pass into repose at death, but into a new world 
of unresting and unceasing activities. The duties which are 
duties here will be duties there. The life which the good 
man has lived here will be essentially the life which he will 
live there. There is absolute continuity of life, and absolute 
identity of character in this world and the next; the only 


278 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


difference being that the after-life is lived upon a higher 
plane, and is made capable of nobler service. The good 
servant has not reached his goal; he has only sighted a 
diviner goal. He has not finished his work; he has only 
entered on a loftier stage of it. He has not completed his 
programme of activity with his last breath; he has only 
passed out of his apprenticeship, and fitted himself for the 
new responsibility of being ruler over many things. He 
steps into heaven as a soldier steps from the ranks to receive 
his company, as the reward of faithful service on the field. 
He has done well only that he may do better. The reward 
of all his toil is that he may be promoted to yet harder toil, 
and this is the reward which he himself most covets. 
Heaven is thus not attainment, but a constantly enlarging 
faculty of attainment; it is to enter into the joy of God, that 
joy of a glad and infinite energy, perpetually spent but never 
exhausted, because it grows and thrives upon its own im- 
mortal ardors. 

The bearing of this lofty doctrine upon social life is very 
evident. Society may be defined as a cooperative scheme of 
human happiness. It is the bank of effort into which every 
human creature pays his energies, from which he draws his 
dividends. ‘The man who spends his hfe not in duties, but 
in pleasures, is a recusant from this fraternity of toil. The 
indolence of the few, supported by the labor of the many, is 
a constant menace to the social order. Inequality of circum- 
stance Christ accepts ; but not inequality in the incidence of 
labor. The Roman system of society, which was based upon 
a scorn of labor; which exhibited patrician life in all its 
stately languors as the perfect life; which drained the veins 
of all the world to support a few in wealth far beyond their 
needs, was a system absolutely false, full of peril to all, and 
doomed to utter failure. Christ substituted for it a codpera- 


BABOSTETON OR SOOM EIVU HS 1279 


tive scheme of social welfare, in which every unit of society 
bore his part. The greater the ability, the station, or the 
wealth, the greater was the obligation and responsibility for 
the welfare of society ; and thus the parable of the talents is 
a programme of that only true society in which each member 
takes his share of the common burden according to his sey- 
eral ability. 

The third great parable in which Jesus expressed his 
social idea is that of Dives and Lazarus. It is a double 
spiritual drama, the first part of which passes on earth, the 
second in the after-world. 

The first part of the drama depicts for us the life of a rich 
man, spent in a sort of splendid isolation, a fastidious seclu- 
sion, into which the “still, sad music of humanity” is not 
allowed to penetrate. Dives is not a bad man; he is such 
an one as the young Ruler himself, grown a little older, more 
than ever convinced of the advantages of wealth, and deter- 
mined to make the most of those advantages. Christ does 
not accuse him of any grossness of conduct, beyond a some- 
what inordinate attention to the pleasures of the table. Itis 
not so much as hinted that he had won his wealth by any 
dishonest or dishonorable means. It is quite possible that 
it was his by inheritance, and that he had never known any 
other life than that of sober order, solid comfort, and sus- 
tained splendor. Nor was he a man distinguished by any 
special harshness of temper toward the poor. It is not said 
that Dives did not feed the beggar at his gate; the inference 
is that Dives did feed Lazarus, for the beggar would not have 
been found daily at his doors, “desiring the crumbs that fell 
from the rich man’s table,’ unless some fragments of the 
sumptuous feast were flung to him. Traditional exegesis 
has done injustice to Dives in making his name the synonym 
of a cruel and heartless brutality toward the poor; on the 


280 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


contrary, Dives appears to have been the type of the pros- 
perous Pharisee; a narrow good man, faithful to his religion, 
precise and mechanical in discharging its obligations, tithing 
himself of all that he possessed, distributing alms daily—a 
trifle ostentatiously perhaps—and never for an instant sus- 
pecting that he was not a man of admirable qualities, and 
even an example of good conventional citizenship. What, 
then, was his sin? It was deliberate destitution of social 
love and sympathy. It was not destitution of personal affec- 
tion; he had loved his kinsfolk and his brethren, and in the 
after-world loves them still with a solicitude which is his 
torture. But he had no elementary sense of what it is that 
constitutes the brotherhood of man. He possessed the worst 
vice of the aristocrat, the desire to widen as far as possible 
the gulf that yawned between himself and the common peo- 
ple. He was charitable to them; but it was with the galling 
condescension of the superior to the inferior. Lazarus might 
be fed from his table, so might the dogs; but if any one had 
hinted to him that Lazarus had human claims upon him he 
would have deemed it an intolerable affront. He loved those 
who loved him; within the limits of his own social order he 
manifested many pleasant and engaging qualities; but the 
idea that Lazarus was entitled to anything more than the 
crumbs which fell from his table was an impertinence. With 
these crumbs and fragments of his daily feast he paid in full 
his social obligations to the beggar, or so he believed; any 
closer personal relation seemed unnecessary. Day by day 
kind and faithful hands bore the cripple to his accustomed 
place. There through the long day he lay in miserable de- 
formity, the comrade of the dogs; at night he was carried 
back to his rude hovel; and this trite drama of unpitied 
poverty had gone on for years. But in all those years Dives 
had never spoken to him; there was a great gulf between 


EXPOSITION‘OFP SOCTAL CERO THS” 28t 


them. He had taken him, and his want and beggary, for 
eranted; it was no affair of his. The barrier of a cruel 
social ostracism rose between them, and the sin of Dives was 
that he had never passed that barrier to speak a word of 
kindness to the beggar, and had never once perceived the 
essential and Divine fact of his human brotherhood with 
him. 

There is a great gulf between Dives and the beggar, says 
Jesus; but it is a gulf which Dives himself has made. 
Through mere pride of nature, or that baser sort of pride 
which springs from great possessions; through egoism which 
develops into arrogance, and fastidious love of isolation which 
rapidly becomes contempt for ignorance and misfortune; 
through unchecked faults of education, through the force of 
selfish social traditions, through the mere sense of self-im- 
portance nurtured and inflamed by relative affluence—through 
these, and many similar causes, men are apt to drift away 
from any real brotherhood with the race. The least that one 
can ask of wealth is that it should moderate the sense of 
disparity between itself and poverty by noble manners, fine 
courtesy, and the gracious temper which disdains to take ad- 
vantage of the vain distinctions of superior rank and birth. 
But Dives had done his best not to abridge but to cultivate 
these disparities. Christ shows us that these disparities go 
far deeper than even Dives had supposed. They are dispari- 
ties of soul as well as circumstance. The soul of the beggar 
has grown silently and nobly in the hard disciplines of life; 
but the soul of Dives had withered in his sumptuous ease. 
And when the curtain lifts upon the after-world, this great 
gulf, whose first line of cleavage may be traced in the earthly 
conduct of the rich man, has become unfathomable. Lazarus 
cannot pass that gulf to comfort Dives even if he would; 
Abraham cannot pass it. It would -have been so easy to 


282 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


bridge that gulf of menacing disparity on earth: a single 
kind word, the hand of Dives laid but an instant in the hand 
of Lazarus, would have done it; but now nothing human can 
achieve it. Divessees far off the shining throngs of those 
who are now the equals of the angels, and Lazarus among 
them. He sees the city of God, “along whose terraces there 
walk men and women of awful and benignant features, who 
view him with distant commiseration”; but they are as high 
above him as he once deemed himself high above Lazarus. 
They may commiserate, but they cannot help him. He who 
wilfully puts a gulf between himself and the good, the hum- 
ble, and the poor, finds hereafter that the gulf is wider than 
he knew. In drifting out of touch with the poor and hum- 
ble he has drifted out of touch with God. 

The problems of the state of Dives in the after-world be- 
long rather to the teachings of Jesus upon judgment than to 
His purely social teachings; yet Christ makes it clear that 
the vision of the after-world is necessary to the right inter- 
pretation of all social duty. This is Christ’s consistent 
thought in each of these great stories. It is the prudent use 
of life with a view to treasure in the heavens that is the theme 
of the first story; the continuity of life, surviving through 
eternal destinies, that is the theme of the second; while in 
the last the life of Dives is not rightly comprehended till it 
is suddenly transported to a loftier stage, where it moves 
amid the dreadful pomp and solemn pageant of a world to 
come. The conclusion is irresistible, and it is one upon 
which all subsequent history has set its seal—viz., that it is 
by spiritual means alone that social reformations can be 
worked out. Man in his elementary state is merely an ani- 
mal with a larger brain; able, by his very power of reason, 
to practice a superior cunning in procuring the means of his 
material pleasures. He is not, indeed, without his altruistic 


EX POSIAION OF SOCTAL ORU THS: 285 


instincts, but these instincts are feeble at the best, and are 
rapidly eliminated in the struggle for existence. Nothing 
can persuade him that wealth is not the chief object of ex- 
istence so long as he sees his life as ended by the grave ; 
nothing can turn him from the quest of wealth, nor make 
him conscious of the degradation of the quest, so long as he 
believes his little earthly life the only life he has. It is the 
vision of the after-world alone that lends a true perspective 
to the earthly life. And so we find that the new society 
which Christ designed first took shape in the hearts of men 
subtly quickened and exalted by the great conviction that 
they moved hourly toward a world that faded not away, which 
was out of sight. The first Christians could surrender all 
they had, and live in cheerful communism, simply because 
the vision of a world to come had taught them to hold of 
small account the prizes of the present world. Great con- 
fraternities in every age, practicing the widest charities, and 
exhibiting the noblest spirit of renunciation, have maintained 
themselves by the ardor of the same lofty and liberating 
thought. The benefactors, the educators, the strenuous re- 
formers of the human race, have, with scarcely an exception, 
been men deeply penetrated by the sense of an eternal life. 
The seed of social ethics fructifies alone in spiritual expe- 
rience. To be good and kind, to be consistently charitable 
and self-sacrificing, men need more than a vague enthusiasm 
of humanity, which seldom survives for long the obduracy of 
the foolish and the baseness of the ungrateful. They need 
to know that these are virtues which God demands from 
man, because they are His own virtues, and that both their 
sanction and reward are with God, who desires that man 
should be perfect as He is perfect. The eternal struggle of 
the world is between the material and the spiritual. It is 
vain to hope for spiritual reconstruction without spiritual de- 


28-4 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


liverance. The one abiding sanction of social ethics is a 
spiritual conception of human life; and this is to say that 
Christianity alone can liberate society from the corruption 
of its selfishness, because Christianity alone can supply the 
spiritual force which is requisite for this deliverance. The 
life of Dives is not comprehended until the curtain lifts on 
an unearthly scene, amid whose dread solemnities we over- 
hear the outcry and debate of his astonished soul; nor is the 
general life of man other than a fragment and a riddle till it 
is seen in its relation to Eternity. 


CHAPTER XXI 
THE TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 


THE social teachings of Christ, taken simply as counsels 
for the present life, do much to invigorate human self-respect, 
and to impart a new dignity to human life. They are utili- 
tarian in the highest degree, in the sense that they afford a 
practicable scheme of general happiness. But the history 
of mankind shows that utilitarianism seldom has any deep 
or prolonged effect upon human conduct. Utilitarianism 
may advance arguments Incomparably lucid and cogent in 
themselves, yet they will be disregarded simply because men 
in general are governed rather through their imagination than 
their reason. An ideal of truth or virtue, which the imagi- 
nation may clothe with a Divine nimbus, is of far greater 
effect in influencing conduct than the clearest motives of self- 
advantage which may be enunciated by the reason. 

Christ was perfectly aware of this truth, and therefore He 
never based social duty on utilitarian motives alone. The 
ereat philosophers of antiquity, who had really taught almost 
all that He Himself taught on good social conduct, had in- 
variably based their counsels on utilitarianism, and for that 
very reason they had failed. It is not enough to tell men 
that this or that course of conduct is wise; they must be as- 
sured that it is right. The man most in error is usually 
conscious enough of his unwisdom; what he lacks is the con- 
viction that he is wrong, and also some powerful motive 
which will enable him to do right. Christ found this mo- 
tive in the nature of God. A gracious and benignant God, 

285 


286 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


presiding over the world and its affairs, would certainly de- 
mand benignant acts and tempers in His creatures. And as 
certainly He would judge and punish contrary acts and tem- 
pers. Hence there grew up in the mind of Jesus the sublime 
thought of a constant and a final judgment, by means of 
which God would punish the obstinately wicked, reward the 
good, redress all wrong, and compensate the victims of injus- 
tice for the pains and sorrows they had suffered at the hands 
of evil men. 

This was to the Jew no novel thought; but it had shared 
the fate of all sublime thoughts which have become familiar 
or scholastic, in being debased by a thousand trivialities of 
interpretation. On the eastern side of Jerusalem yawned the 
gorge or valley of Jehoshaphat, where it was supposed the 
final judgment of the world would take place. At a given 
hour, fixed in the counsels of the Most High, the valley 
would expand miraculously to afford room for the uncounted 
multitudes who would then throng to the verdicts of the last 
assize. The neighboring gorge of Hinnom, once the scene 
of abhorred sacrifices to Moloch, now the detested crema- 
torium of all the offal of the city, and known as Tophet, or 
the place of fire, was the appointed prison of the impenitent. 
The valley of Gehinnom became by a contraction Gehenna, 
or hell, and is so spoken of by both Jews and Mohammedans 
to the present day. What would happen in this last assize 
was a subject of eternal and often childish dispute among 
the Rabbis. They all held that the righteous would then 
enter into life eternal, but opinions were greatly divided as 
to the fate of the wicked. Some held that the wicked would 
then be annihilated in the flames of Gehenna; others that 
they would “go down to Gehinnom, and moan and come up 
again.” Some imagined the spirits of all Israelites as con- 
fined in these flames of Gehenna, to be released at the word 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 287 


of the Messiah, who was the appointed Judge of all things ; 
others described hell as being itself extinguished in a final 
restitution of the world to God—* There is no Gehinnom in 
the world to come” was a familiar Jewish saying. Yet 
another school of teachers pictured the sheath of the sun as 
withdrawn in the last days, so that a mighty conflagration 
swept the world, from which the righteous only would emerge, 
purified and made immortal in this bath of flame. It will 
be seen from the nature of these extraordinary beliefs that 
while the Jewish mind dwelt much upon the theme of judg- 
ment, there was the widest diversity of teaching as to its 
processes, especially in relation to the wicked. Gehenna is va- 
riously conceived as purgatory, as a prison-house of tor- 
ture, and as a pit of annihilation; the Judgment itself as 
the vindication of the Jew, and as the general assize of the 
world. 

Now it is of great importance to remember that when 
Christ spoke of judgment He used the natural language of 
His time, which was perfectly familiar to the Jew. How 
far may we accept this language as the language of His own 
mind? How far did He adopt popular symbols of speech 
as an accommodation to the comprehension of His hearers? 
These are questions difficult to decide, and perhaps no final 
decision can be reached. When Christ speaks, in one of 
His earlier parables, of the tares of the field being burned up 
in the day of harvest, He certainly prefigures the total an- 
nihilation of wickedness and the wicked in terms that scarcely 
admit dispute. “The Son of Man shall send forth the angels, 
and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that 
offend and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into a 
furnace of fire.” When He speaks in the same parable of 
the righteous shining forth “as the sun in the kingdom of 
the Father,’ there is a‘clear echo of the legend that in the 


288 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


last day the sheath of the sun would be removed, pouring 
healing flame upon the blessed and consuming flame upon 
the evil. Nor can we doubt in what sense He used the word 
hell, since hell was the common synonym of that Gehenna, 
in whose ceaseless fires the pollutions of the city were con- 
sumed. Gehenna to the Jew was a fearful and a noisome 
spectacle; yet it had its cheerful aspect too, since its flame 
was cleansing flame, by whose deadly yet benignant energy 
the health of the city was ensured. But the truth is, that 
Christ’s deliberate thought ought not to be deduced from the 
popular symbols He employed, which are always capable of 
various interpretations. If Christ used these symbols it was 
because He knew that they conveyed instant images to the 
mind of great suggestiveness and force, and in this sense 
they were an accommodation to the comprehension of His 
hearers. In the same manner, when we say that the sun 
rises or sets we use a symbolic phrase which is scientifically 
untrue ; yet we use it without scruple, although we know that 
it is incorrect, because it conveys most readily the image of 
what we mean. So Christ used familiar Jewish terms on 
judgment without defining the degree of their accuracy or 
inaccuracy. He knew that they were variously interpreted, 
yet He used them because they conveyed His general mean- 
ing with vividness and force, and for the purposes of a popu- 
lar discourse this was enough. But the use of these phrases 
was constantly corrected by His more deliberate, delicate, 
and discriminating utterances upon judgment, precisely as 
science corrects our popular descriptions of natural phenom- 
ena. We must therefore turn to these if we would know the 
mind of Christ. We must examine the principles of judg- 
ment, not the pictures only; and we must do so with the 
clear understanding that no word of Christ’s is of private in- 
terpretation. All that He taught must be consistently re- 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT _ 289 


viewed in the light of His own character and by the measure 
of His own temper. 

The phrases used by Christ, then, in the expression of His 
thoughts on judgment, may be set aside, not indeed as unim- 
portant, but as unessential. It is almost impossible to as- 
certain that the word “eternal” referred to eternity in the 
strict sense; certainly it was used with many shades of 
meaning by the Jewish Rabbis. It is equally difficult to de- 
cide what meaning the Jews attached to the word Gehenna, 
or hell, as a spiritual symbol. Upon the whole it may be 
said that the Jews did believe in some form of eternal pun- 
ishment, and that Christ, in using the phrase, used the com- 
mon theological language of His time; but it was so vaguely 
defined that it covered many doctrines and ideas. How 
unwilling the Jew was to attach to the phrase those dreadful 
ideas of endless torture, which sprang from the harsher mind 
of medizval Christendom, is curiously indicated by a custom 
which still survives, of which the writer himself was once a 
witness. An old man was brought from the town of Safed, 
“the city on a hill” of which Christ spake, to die beside the 
waters of Tiberias. Immediately before death his neck was 
broken by another man, who thus became his scapegoat and 
accepted the burden of his sins. When this man came near 
the hour of death, he in turn would surrender himself to the 
hand of the slayer, and his sins would in like manner fall 
upon another. The meaning of this extraordinary custom, 
according to local tradition, appeared to be that in the end 
of the world there would be but one man who would pass 
into hell, the sin of the whole world, by these reiterated acts 
of transference, being summed up in him alone. A sublime 
idea which, however painfully expressed, does credit to the 
charity of the human heart! It is so that man constantly 


moderates the logic of the reason by the logic of the heart ; 
19 


290 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


and in the Jewish doctrine of punishment, which Christ ac- 
cepted, there were many such modifications, which make it 
so difficult to attach exact meanings to such phrases as Hell 
and Everlasting Punishment, that it would be folly to build 
any definite doctrine upon them. 

But if we turn from words and phrases to principles we 
find Christ speaking with perfect clearness of thought and 
firmness of definition. Thus, in one of His earlier parables, 
He describes two servants, of whom one knew his lord’s will 
and one did not. They are both unfaithful servants, but they 
are not equally unfaithful. The one who knew his lord’s 
will and did it not is beaten with many stripes; the other, 
who knew not his lord’s will and did things worthy of stripes, 
is beaten with few stripes. This saying is undoubtedly 
meant as a reference to the Gentile nations; and it is char- 
acteristic of St. Luke, who was himself a Gentile and always 
eager to collect all the words of Christ which were favorable 
to the Gentiles, that he reports it while St. Matthew omits 
it. And it is a very significant saying, too, when we remem- 
ber that one of the most popular descriptions of the judgment 
of the world in the valley of Jehoshaphat represented the 
Gentiles as arguing in vain with God, who will hear none of 
their pleas, but drives them from Him into hopeless punish- 
ment. Christ, with a single word, clears the judgment of 
God from all these elements of rancor or vindictiveness by 
showing that punishment is proportioned to offence with the 
nicest accuracy. Extenuations are allowed, and even wel- 
comed, by the Judge who willeth not the death of the sinner, 
but rather that he should turn and live. Ignorance of truth 
does not wholly exculpate or justify the growth of error, but 
it excites pity, it moderates rebuke, it is a plea for mercy. 
This conclusion, whose justice none can question, was here- 
after to become, in the lips of St. Paul, an eloquent apology 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 291 


for the Gentiles, who, being without law, were to be judged 
as without law; and it is still the consolation of pious minds, 
oppressed with the problem of what God may do with the 
heathen peoples who know Him not. Whatever God does 
will be just, says Christ; so just that the criminal himself 
will acquiesce with the justice of the Judge. There are no 
wholesale condemnations; every case will be tried with an 
infinite delicacy of discrimination; and in every case the 
punishment which God decrees will be proportioned with 
exactitude to the offence. 

Another principle of after-judgment is the principle of 
compensation. This was an habitual thought of Christ. It 
is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, as a principle that 
subtly works through all the fortunes of this present life. 
The poor and the meek, those who mourn and those who are 
persecuted, are by no means neglected or forgotten by the 
heavenly Judge; they find things made up to them in the 
tranquillity or joy of their own spirits. The disciples them- 
selves, when they speak half-regretfully of the sacrifices they 
have made for their Master’s sake, are assured that even in 
the present world they will gain far more than they have 
lost. The doctrine is used as a weapon of terrible irony 
and rebuke against the rich, who are told that they have had 
their consolations in this life and need expect nothing in the 
life to come. And it is used with even more startling force 
in'the parable of Dives and Lazarus, where it is assumed 
that Lazarus had some right to compensation in another 
world for the sorrows and indignities which he had endured 
in this. The influence which these thoughts have exercised 
upon the world has been enormous. Christianity found its 
earliest converts among the drudges of society ; among those 
who were, like Lazarus, familiar with disease and beggary ; 
and the idea of compensation was like a silver chime of hope 


299 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


heard through the darkness of a long night and heralding 
the dawn. But they would never have believed it true if the 
instincts of the heart had not affirmed it just. The man who 
is disinherited of all the joy and ease of life does not need 
to be persuaded that he has a claim on God for compensa- 
tion. He can afford to wait if he can believe that God is not 
unmindful of him. He can accept his lot with fortitude, 
with admirable tranquillity, with a sense of superiority to 
destiny, if he can believe that the long arrears of pain will 
be overpaid some day in the inalienable felicity of heaven. 
The patience of the poor, that inimitable patience which en- 
dures in silence the infliction of a thousand wrongs, has 
owed itself through many centuries to this hope. “God will 
make it up to us, for God is just,” is the unspoken comfort 
of the meek, who see life pass before them like a pageant 
from which they are excluded; and Christ confirms the 
thought. They have had their evil things, and now they 
will be comforted. They have lain with the dogs at the gate 
of Dives, and now they will lie in Abraham’s bosom. Inm- 
poverished and despised, none have regarded them ; but now 
God Himself will gather them in His arms and heal the 
wounds of life at a touch and wipe away the tears from off 
all faces. 


‘There is life with God, 
In other kingdoms of a sweeter air; 
In Eden every flower is blown.” 


Another principle which rules all Christ’s thoughts of judg- 
ment is that punishment is not penal only but remedial. 
Never was there more monstrous misconception than that 
which pictures man as eternally punished, because this 
would mean in effect the eternal existence of evil—a thought 
which Christ refused to contemplate. The sole end of pun- 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT — 293 


ishment, when not administered by the cruel, is amendment 
or reclamation; but a punishment which is eternal either 
means that the sinner is incapable of reclamation, or that his 
punishment runs on long after his offence is purged. Christ 
never once uses any language that would lead us to suppose 
that hypotheses so intolerable as these had ever crossed His 
mind. He speaks of the unfaithful servant as beaten with 
few or many stripes, but He certainly does not speak of him 
as endlessly beaten. He speaks in the Sermon on the Mount 
of one who is in danger of hell-fire through his contempt for 
his brother; and then, by a slight change of metaphor, rep- 
resents the same person as a debtor cast into prison, from 
whence he is not liberated till he has paid “the uttermost 
farthing”; but the inference is absolutely clear that in the 
moment when the last fraction of the debt is paid, the man 
will certainly come out of hell or prison. And in the solemn 
close of the great spiritual drama of Dives and Lazarus, 
Christ does distinctly represent the punishment of Dives as 
remedial, for already he is a better man in hell than he was 
on earth. He has indeed made great moral and spiritual 
advances since the days when he fared sumptuously, and 
eared for nothing but the pleasures of his own fastidious 
luxury. He has become humble, wise, magnanimous ; hum- 
ble enough to appeal to Lazarus for help; wise enough to 
know that Lazarus is a spirit moving at a higher range than 
his, who may warn his brethren of their peril, though he 
himself cannot; magnanimous enough to think of his breth- 
ren before himself, and to pour out his soul in agonized en- 
treaty that something may be done to keep them from the 
anguish he endures. These are not the characteristics of a 
soul so evil that it cannot be reclaimed; nor can it be con- 
ceived that a punishment that has already wrought such 
changes in the sufferer will not reach its limit, and at last 


294 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


achieve its purpose in the full purification of the soul. 
Against conceptions so deliberate and defined as these it 
would be a childish folly to weigh an adjective or a phrase 
of doubtful meaning. The punishments of judgment were so 
awful that they justified the use of the most impressive symbols 
which the mind could fashion; but uppermost in all Christ’s 
thoughts is the conception of all such punishments as dis- 
ciphnary and remedial, and it is hard to see how any other 
theory of punishment can be consistent with the elementary 
principles of justice, to say nothing of that doctrine of the 
benignant Fatherhood of God, which was the keystone of all 
Christ’s teaching. 

But Christ has done much more than enumerate certain 
principles of judgment; He declared Himself to be the 
Judge; and it therefore becomes necessary to review all His 
teachings upon judgment in the light of what we know of 
His own character and temper. He conceived Himself as 
departing from the world for a season, and returning in 
ereat power and glory amid the clouds of heaven; as coming 
suddenly, in an hour when no one looked for Him; as seated 
upon a throne, surrounded by His apostles, judging the 
twelve tribes of Israel; as calling all nations to His feet, 
and dividing the eyil from the good, as a shepherd divides 
the sheep from the goats. Such grandiose and daring 
visions naturally suggest to the critic who can see Jesus only 
as a human teacher, a mind swept from its balance and on 
the verge of madness. But we must remember that in all 
the Jewish legends of Messiahship the Messiah is a Judge. 
It was at the call of the Messiah that the valley of Jehosha- 
phat would be transformed into a vast theatre of judgment. 
It was in Jerusalem that He would reign; yet not the old 
and narrow Jerusalem which David built, but a new Jerusa- 
lem indeed, miraculously expanded, stretching from Joppa 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT — 295 


to Damascus, soaring high among the clouds, the neighbor 
of the morning stars, whose gates should be entire and per- 
fect chrysolites, whose windows should be precious gems, 
whose very walls should be built of stones of silver and 
crowned with battlements of gold. This visionary city of 
impossible Miltonic splendor, 
‘¢With alabaster domes and silver spires 
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high 
Uplifted,” 

was to become the new and last metropolis of the entire 
earth. Rome herself, and all the millions of her empire, 
was to come hither for the Day of Judgment, in the hour 
when the Messiah put the trumpet to His lips. Such were 
the dreams and visions of Rabbinic lore, and thus again 
Jesus spoke familiar language to the Jew when He spoke of 
Himself as Judge. But in a day when these extravagant 
pictures of the Messiah as a Judge filled all minds, nothing 
is more astonishing than the moderation of His language. 
For He claims to know neither the day nor the hour of 
judgment—that is a secret hidden in the mind of God. He 
discourages discussions on the subject, and tells His dis- 
ciples that it were wiser to seek themselves to enter in at the 
strait gate than to indulge in speculations as to how many 
shall be saved. And finally He frees this idea of the Mes- 
siah as a Judge from all these half-puerile, half-sublime, but 
wholly material conceptions which had gathered round it, 
and affirms it as a spiritual idea. It is not in the valley of 
Jehoshaphat but at the tribunals of Eternity that men shall 
be judged; not by their obedience to the law of Moses, but 
to the diviner law of love; and the end of this great assize 
will not be the abasement of the Gentile and the exaltation 
of the Jew, but equal justice to the whole world, irrespective 
of either race or creed. 


296 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


It is in the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel 
that we have the fullest exposition of these ideas. All that 
Christ had taught of social duty in the parables of the Tal- 
ents, of the Unfaithful Servants, of the Good Samaritan, of 
Dives and Lazarus, is now summed up in one great deliber- 
ate picture of the final Judgment. The Son of Man is the 
Judge, no wrathful Titan, no grandiose Messiah throned on 
clouds whose “restless fronts bore stars,’ no soldier-vindi- 
cator, “with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms,” but a 
Shepherd. He is mild but.firm, gentle yet unspeakably au- 
gust. He bears the marks of wounds and sickness; His 
lips have thirsted and his heart has hungered ; and beneath 
the robes of light which He now wears can be discerned the 
rags of One who was a beggar, stained with the foulness of 
a prison. It is as though Lazarus himself came to judge the 
world, and Christ asks such questions as Lazarus might 
have asked of a world that had neglected him. “I was an 
hungered; who gave Me meat? I was thirsty; and who 
gave Me drink? I was a stranger; and who took Me in? I 
was naked; and who clothed Me? I was sick; and who 
visited Me? I was in prison; and who came unto Me? ”— 
is the strange appeal which the Judge makes to this silent, 
awe-struck audience. And then begins a singular debate, 
suggested possibly by those profane contentions which the 
Rabbis represented as happening when the Gentiles stood 
before the throne of God, and found their pleas rejected. 
The righteous reply that it is impossible that they should 
have done any act of kindness to the Judge, for when knew 
they Him to be hungry, or thirsty, or sick, or naked? It is 
true that they have often performed such acts for the lowly 
and the impoverished, but it does not occur to them to make 
a boast or a plea of these common charities of life. The 


beautiful reply of the Shepherd-Judge is that since He is 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 297 


the Son of Man, humanity itself stands represented in Him. 
Acts of kindness done to the least of these “ His brethren,” 
were done to Him. Unseen and unrecognized He had moved 
amid the throngs of men, looking on them through the eyes 
of beggarmen and lepers, hungry for the word of kindness 
which was never spoken. This saying arouses the resent- 
ment of the unrighteous, who think themselves unfairly 
treated. How could they be supposed to recognize a King 
in rags? . How could they be accused of inhospitality to a 
King they did not know? If they had indeed known that it 
was their King who knocked on that forgotten day upon the 
door and asked for bread that was refused ; if the least hint 
had reached them that the man lying at the gate and full of 
sores was the Shepherd-Judge Himself disguised in a leper’s 
rags—who so quick to help as they? And again the beau- 
tiful reply comes: “Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least 
of these, ye did it not to Me.” Their very plea of extenuation 
is their plainest condemnation. It is not by ostentatious, 
but by simple, unknown, and almost unconscious acts of 
kindness, that the true spirit of men is revealed. The good 
have done good, not thinking it remarkable; the evil have 
been hard of heart, not supposing it was observed: nothing 
can be more striking than the exquisite surprise of the one, 
the overwhelming consternation of the other, when it ap- 
pears that these unremembered acts of life afford the data 
by which they will be judged. Once more we see the cen- 
tral thought of all Christ’s teaching laid bare: that it 1s by 
love that men are justified before their Maker ; by loveless- 
ness they judge themselves unworthy of the love of God. It 
is the Shepherd who Himself loved the sheep who is the 
Judge; the book which lies open before Him is the book of 
human heart; the tribunal where men are gathered is the 
Court of Charity. 


298 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


This was the last parable which Jesus spoke, and in a very 
real sense it is the summary of all His teaching. It is cer- 
tainly the summary of all His thoughts on judgment. The 
general principles on which He based His ideas of judgment 
we have already seen; this is the revelation of the spirit of 
the judgment. It is love that reigns supreme in every word 
and act. The Shepherd-Judge shows Himself eager to dis- 
cover the good in men which they themselves have forgotten ; 
and in making charity the one test of character He assures 
every kind heart of acquittal in the day when the secrets of 
all hearts shall be revealed. This is far from being a doc- 
trine acceptable to men, who perversely imagine that creeds, 
forms of faith, and rigid virtues alone can justify man before 
his Maker. So little have men learned of the true spirit of 
Jesus, that even at the present hour the great majority of 
Christian teachers would hesitate to say that a charitable life 
is the only true religion, or at least would regard such a 
statement as perilous and misleading. But this is the dis- 
tinct teaching of Jesus in His final parable. And it is in 
entire consonance with His own life. He habitually meas- 
ured men by their power of love. If in His frequent de- 
scriptions of judgment He sometimes used the phrases com- 
mon to His time which sound harsh and dreadful, we must 
construe them by all that we know of His own life and char- 
acter and temper. If we can assure ourselves that Jesus 
Himself would never have inflicted hopeless torture on any 
living soul, we may dismiss these phrases as delusive. If 
we can further assure ourselves that the perfect love of God 
will control every verdict of the Divine judgments upon men, 
we know as much as it is needful we should know. Man 
has reached the furthest point of both faith and knowledge 
when he can affirm of these solemn processes of judgment 
“All’s law, yet all’s love.” 


TEACHINGS UPON JUDGMENT 299 


It is little wonder that such profound and novel teachings 
should have changed the course of human history. The 
thought of a final judgment, often clothed in solemn and 
alarming imagery, always appealing to the vital instincts of 
the conscience, has done much to purify and elevate the life 
of men, to open to them a sublime range of vision, to invigo- 
rate their endeavors after virtue and perfection. It has no 
doubt been abused at various times, and has assumed a dis- 
proportionate significance. The Dies Lre—that hymn of 
dreadful ecstasy, which rang so long and loud, like a clash 
of trumpets, through the churches and the shrines of Chris- 
tendom, often drowned the softer accents of the Good Shep- 
herd. But it at least roused men to a sense of immutable 
responsibility to God, and filled them with wholesome fear 
lest they should fail in duty to their brethren. No reform 
of manners can ever be achieved without a quickening of the 
general conscience; and no motive known to man has had 
such efficacy in the quickening of conscience as the convic- 
tion that the lifting curtain of the grave reveals a throne of 
judgment, where every man must answer for the deeds done 
in the body. Jesus, by His teaching, wrought into the con- 
sciousness of Europe this imperishable truth. A hush of 
fear and awe fell upon the nations, as the judgment-seat of 
Christ possessed those heavens, whence the gods of Rome 
and Greece had fled. Upon the waking West there fell the 
burning light of Christ, as the sun shone upon the statue of 
Memnon, throned 


‘‘beneath the Libyan hills, 
Where spreading Nile parts hundred-gated Thebes.” 


When the first flame-arrow of the dawn smote this silent 
statue, a music thrilled from the sonorous stone, like the 
snapping of some hidden string, and this was thought to be 


300 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the voice of Memnon hailing his mother, the New Day. So 
the burning ray of Christ fell upon a world sunk deep in 
night, and the string that clanged and broke through all Ku- 
rope was materialism. Men woke from sleep to find them- 
selves the heritors of a more spacious universe than they 
had ever dreamed. The day had come, and from lip to lip 
ran the new and animating message, “It is high time to 
awake out of sleep. The night is far spent, the day is at 
hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and 
let us put on the armor of ight. For the Lord is at hand!” 


CHAPTER XXII 
THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 


From His wanderings in Perea Jesus is called to the 
neighborhood of Jerusalem by the news of the sickness and 
the death of His dearest friend, Lazarus of Bethany. He 
returns to Bethany with the definite purpose of restoring 
Lazarus to life. The career of Jesus as a miracle-worker is 
now to close in one astounding and consummating act. His 
last parable lifts the curtain of the world to come, and re- 
veals man as a creature of infinite destinies ; His last great 
act of miracle is to recall from that unseen world one who 
has already met its solemn judgment and entered on its new 
and unimaginable life. 

The raising of Lazarus is generally esteemed the greatest 
miracle of Christ; it would be more correct to describe it as 
His most deliberate miracle, of which we have the most de- 
tailed description. In itself it is not more remarkable than 
the restoration to life of the son of the widow of Nain, re- 
lated by St. Luke; or of the daughter of Jairus which was 
considered so authentic, that it 1s recorded in each of the 
synoptic Gospels. Nor are these previous miracles less de- 
tailed, unless we use detail as the synonym for mere ampli- 
tude of phrase and narrative. The great feature of this last 
miracle is its deliberation; in all other respects it is neither 
more or less astonishing than previous miracles. We may, 
of course, except the frequent miracles of healing. These 
may be explained in some degree by “the subtle co-opera- 


tion of two imaginations and two wills,” and even to the 
301 


302 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


rationalist they are not incredible. It is when we are con- 
fronted with the raising of the dead that all ordinary expli- 
cations fail us. Here the most devout mind may be forgiven 
occasional pangs of incredulity. 

The narrative is full of special difficulties which no man 
of intelligence can ignore. The most serious of these difti- 
culties is the silence of the synoptic Gospels. How is it 
that John alone relates an event of such importance? But 
we may ask with equal relevance, how is it that John does 
not relate the raising from. the dead of Jairus’s daughter ? 
Or, how is it that only Luke relates the touching and inimi- 
table story of the restoration to life of the only son of the 
widow of Nain? Of all the earlier miracles of Jesus these 
were by far the most astounding, and were of equal signifi- 
cance; we should expect therefore that whatever things the 
biographer of Jesus would omit, these would be precisely 
the things that could never be omitted. But the Evangelists 
did not obey the ordinary canons of biography. The mod- 
ern biographer would certainly begin his work by collecting 
the most remarkable incidents in the career of his hero, be- 
cause he would know that he could satisfy the public taste 
and judgment in no other way. But the Evangelists found 
the whole life of Jesus so remarkable that they felt no need 
of such discrimination. Hach related the events that he best 
remembered, or which were best attested by the general 
memory. Moreover, there was a good reason why John 
alone should record the miracle of Lazarus, which does not 
apply to the earlier Evangelists. John is especially the his- 
torian of the Judean ministry, and of the Passion. Three- 
fourths of his entire Gospel, as we have seen, is devoted to 
the last six months of the life of Jesus. He is therefore the 
natural historian of Lazarus, and it is possible that he shared 
the friendship of the house at Bethany in a degree not known 


THESRAISING: OFFEAZARUS 303 


to Matthew or Peter. If we are to proceed upon the princi- 
ple that only those incidents in the life of Jesus are authen- 
tic which are attested by more than one Evangelist we must 
dismiss Luke’s story of the widow of Nain as well as John’s 
story of the raising of Lazarus; and it is manifest that this 
narrow principle, rigidly appled, would delete from the 
Scriptures many of the acts and words of Jesus which the 
world holds most lovely, most significant, and most precious 
as the food of faith. 

A less serious, but not unimportant, difficulty is that in 
the final trial of Jesus nothing is said of this stupendous act 
which almost immediately preceded it. But the same thing 
may be said of a hundred wonderful and benignant acts in 
the life of Christ. We may ask with equal surprise where 
were the blind men whose eyes Christ had opened, the lame 
men whom he had cured, that not one of them was found in 
the hall of Caiaphas to bear witness to his Benefactor? Two 
notable miracles of this class had been wrought under the 
hostile eyes of the priests themselves in Jerusalem; yet 
neither the paralytic of the Pool of Bethesda, nor the man 
blind from his birth whom the priests had excommunicated, 
appear either as witnesses or friends in the last tragic scenes, 
when the full storm of ruin broke upon their Healer. The 
explanation is that Jesus was not tried as a false Messiah, 
but as a political offender. The aim of the priests was to 
prove that He had perverted the nation, because upon this 
charge alone could they secure His death. Therefore they 
had ceased to weigh the evidence for or against His miracles ; 
they had become a matter of indifference. Lazarus himself, 
had he appeared before the Sanhedrim, would have been 
quite incapable of deflecting a course of judgment already 
predetermined, or of altering by any appeal or evidence that he 
could offer a verdict which purposely ignored such evidence, 


304 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


But difficulties based upon the silence of the synoptic 
Gospels, or the absence of Lazarus from the trial of Jesus, 
are trivial compared with the difficulties which arise from the 
nature of the narrative itself. The plain question which 
must be met is, Is the story true? It would be foolish to 
reply that the question is irreverent and inadmissible, be- 
cause the whole story challenges criticism, and John shows 
no disposition to evade this criticism. The apostles them- 
selves, in the far more important matter of Christ's own 
resurrection, never imagined that their statements would be 
received without examination. St. Matthew himself relates 
that even in that last sublime moment, when Jesus vanished 
into the heavens, “some doubted”; and St. Paul argues at 
length the possibility of resurrection with the Corinthian 
converts. Blind faith is as foolish as blind incredulity. All 
phenomena, whatever the ultimate verdict passed upon them, 
must first of all be examined at the tribunal of the reason. 
It is scarcely wonderful that a phenomenon so astounding as 
this should have been examined with unusual severity, or 
that men should have sought any kind of plausible invention 
which should relieve the reason from accepting a story which 
contradicts at every point all the known familiar facts of 
human experience. 

Is this story an invention? John certainly shows himself 
in his Apocalypse capable of sublime powers of invention, 
but they are precisely those powers which are least capable 
of sober narrative. If we may use the term, the Apocalypse 
is distinguished by a certain noble insobriety of thought and 
phrase; it is a gorgeous dream, behind whose veils move 
the forms of Nero, as the Beast, and his victims, as invinci- 
ble protagonists, struggling on a stage that is set among the 
clouds amid the marvels of infinity. But it would require a 
mind of very different quality, infinitely more exact and deli- 


TUL RAISING OR IEAZARUS 305 


cate, tJ invent such a narrative as this. With what an ex- 
quisite touch are the characters of the two sisters rendered ! 
They live, they move; their thoughts are beautifully natural 
and spontaneous; they excite the liveliest pity and a breath- 
less interest. Nor are they copied from the earlier portraits 
of St. Luke. It is Mary now who remains disconsolate and 
crushed ; it is Martha, filled with faith, who declares herself 
convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. The character of 
Thomas is also rendered with an equal fidelity to what we 
know of him already, yet with the addition of new elements, 
which would certainly not have occurred to a writer of fiction. 
Thomas, hitherto the man of divided mind, is now the hero, 
who casts aside his hesitations, and is prepared to die with 
Christ. The various emotions of Christ Himself; His words 
when the message of the anxious sisters reaches Him in 
Perea; His debate with the disciples ; His conversation with 
Martha; His outburst of sorrow at the grave; His prayer at 
the doorway of the tomb—all these things are conveyed with 
a realism, with a firmness and fidelity of touch, surely not 
possible to fiction. We may omit from consideration the 
culpability that would attach to John for passing off as his- 
tory what was really fiction, and the condemnation of his 
whole Gospel which such a charge involves, if it be proven. 
Whether he was morally capable of inventing such a story is 
not the question; but certainly he was intellectually incapa- 
ble. Whatever course our thoughts may take upon the 
nature of the story, it is beyond dispute that John believed 
himself to be narrating something that had actually hap- 
pened, and he narrates it with a close attention to the 
sequence and probability of history, which would be impos- 

sible in deliberate invention. 
Is the story a parable? This is the ingenious suggestion 
of those who desire to maintain reverence for Christ while » 
20 


306 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


denying His miraculous power. The story of the blind man 
who witnessed before the priests, “'This one thing I know, 
that whereas I was blind, now I see,” is a parable on the 
saying, “I am the Light of the World.” The raising of 
Lazarus is a parable on the greater saying, “I am the Resur- 
rection and the Life.” But this is again to credit John with 
delicate powers of invention, of which his other writings show 
no trace. Moreover, there is not the least suggestion of the 
parabolic form in the narrative. When Jesus narrates a 
parable we are never left indoubt as to His intention. How- 
ever vivid and real may be the picture which He draws, it is 
so clearly differentiated from sober history that the dullest 
mind is not likely to confuse the two. No one has ever yet 
confused Shakespeare’s account of; Hamlet, or Goethe’s 
dramatic portraiture of Faust, with Carlyle’s biography of 
Frederick the Great or Macaulay’s history of William of 
Orange. They are totally unlike; one is ideally and dra- 
matically true, but the other is historically true. There is an 
entire difference of method which is self-evident even to the 
mind least accustomed to literary distinctions. The same 
difference is found here, and it is strongly marked at every 
point. We have a circumstantial narrative of the events 
which led Jesus to return from Perea to Bethany; of His 
own thoughts and the thoughts of the disciples ; of the hopes 
and feelings of the bereaved sisters who await the coming of 
Christ ; besides an exact portraiture of the sisters themselves, 
who are already known figures in the Gospel history. The 
only ground for this suggestion seems to be that since Christ 
once framed a parable about a beggar who was called Laz- 
arus, this story may be a continuation of the parable, since 
it also concerns a man called Lazarus! The suggestion is 
puerile in the extreme and is unworthy of its authors, as it is 
unworthy of the attention of any thinking man. 


EL en LOVING ORLA ZARNUS 307 


The difficulties become yet greater when it is suggested 
that what happened at Bethany was an elaborate drama ar- 
ranged by the collusion of the friends of Jesus, and with the 
tacit approval of Jesus Himself. For we may ask what need 
was there to plan a false miracle, when already even the ene- 
mies of Jesus had believed that they had witnessed true 
miracles? Jesus was already credited with the power of 
raising the dead. The stories of Jairus’s daughter and of 
the son of the widow of Nain were widely known. It could 
add nothing to His reputation to perform a similar act at 
Bethany. Besides, if this narrative is to be treated as his- 
tory at all, it is clear that the miracle was wrought in the 
presence of numerous spectators, among whom were many 
Jews from Jerusalem, who were intensely hostile to Christ. 
They would surely know whether Lazarus were really dead 
or not. ‘They were not likely to be deceived by a plot which 
wrapped the still living Lazarus in grave-clothes, gave him a 
mock funeral, and arranged his grave as the theatre of a 
clumsy fraud. We are told that many Jews, when they saw 
the act that Jesus did, believed on Him; and the first ques- 
tion of the Pharisees when they subsequently called a coun- 
cil to plan His death, was, “What do we? For this man 
doeth many miracles. If we let Him thus alone all men will 
believe on Him, and the Romans shall come and take away 
both our place and nation.” Had the friends of Jesus been 
capable of arranging a sham miracle, arguing that the end 
justified the means, the last place they would have chosen 
would have been the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem, 
the last audience they would have invited to the scene would 
have been the acute and hostile Jews of Jerusalem, and the 
last actors in the drama would have been persons so well 
known as Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. 

But criticism cannot stop at this point. Even if it were 


308 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


possible to accept this explanation and to pardon the ill- 
judged zeal of the friends of Jesus, we have to ask what we 
are to think of Jesus Himself as tho chiet actor im this drama 
of deceit? Hither He was successfully imposed upon by 
His friends, and thought He had raised the dead when Ho 
had not, or He connived in their deliberate fraud and pro- 
tended to restore life to a man who was not really dead at 
all. In either case the character of Christ is gone. He be- 
comes a charlatan who imposes on Himself and others. Tho 
purity, the loftiness, the sincerity of His character has re- 
ceived a stain which is indelible. The worst fate that the 
Sanhedrim can visit on Him is deserved: for He is mani- 
festly one who “deceived the people.” Nor is extenuation 
possible. It is little short of blasphemy to plead, as M. 
Renan does, that “in this dull and impure city of Jerusalem, 
Jesus was no longer Himself; His conscience had lost some- 
thing of its original purity; He suffered the miracles opinion 
demanded of Him rather than performed them.” Surely it 
is a singular obtuseness of both mind and conscience which 
forbids the inventor of such a theory from discerning that 
the entire ministry of Christ has crumbled into ruin, if such 
things be true. Nor does the narrator of the story stand in 
much better case than Jesus Himself. John must have been 
aware of the fraud. Even if it could have been successfully 
concealed from the multitude, it must have been fully known 
to that inner circle of Christ's friends to whom John be- 
longed. He knew when he lay upon the bosom of Jesus at 
the Last Supper that he lay upon the bosom of a man who 
had deceived him. He knew when he wrote the great pro- 
legomena of his Gospel, declaring Jesus the Eternal Word, 
that he made that immeasurable claim for an impostor. He 
knew when he painted the closing scenes of tragedy through 
which Christ passes with superb innocence to a Cross from 


ER UN Gr Om aE AZALI S 309 


which He forgave others, that He was not innocent, that He 
deserved His fate, that He Himself needed forgiveness from 
a world He had misled. And he knew when he denounced 
Judas that he was denouncing the one disciple who had taken 
a sane and rational view of Jesus. But it is needless to un- 
wind further this tangled skein of impossibilities and absurdi- 
ties. As the story of the raising of Lazarus is clearly not 
an invention or a parable, so it cannot have been a triumph 
of collusion. Of all the theories put forward by the critic- 
apologists of Jesus, this is the most unworthy, the most ab- 
surd, and the least tenable. 

Let us turn, then, to the story itself, as a piece of authen- 
tic history, and examine it for ourselves. 

It commences with a singularly lifelike sketch of the con- 
duct of Jesus and of His disciples. He is practically an ex- 
ile in Perea, warned out of Judea by the violence of His ene- 
mies; yet no sooner does the news reach Him of the sick- 
ness of His friend than He immediately resolves upon return. 
The disciples are naturally averse from encountering this 
peril. ‘They understand from the enigmatic words which 
Jesus first uses that Lazarus has been sick and is recovering ; 
he is asleep and will do well. Jesus alone knows the real 
truth, which He presently reveals, telling them plainly that 
Lazarus is dead. The disciples naturally see in this a good 
reason for not returning to Judea. If Lazarus is dead it can 
serve no purpose for Christ to expose Himself to certain 
peril, for He can do no good at Bethany. They count as 
obstinacy the resolve to return, and Thomas alone plays the 
hero, crying in a passion of noble, despairing love, “Let us 
also go, that we may die with Him.” It has occurred to 
none of them that Jesus may have formed the design of rais- 
ing Lazarus from the dead. But in the mind of Jesus this 
design is already settled. He communicates it by degrees 


310 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


to His disciples. He tells them that He goes to awake Laz- 
arus out of sleep; that He is glad for their sakes that He 
was not present when Lazarus died; that what He is about 
to do is for the encouragement of their belief. In the two 
previous instances of restoration from the dead, it is notice- 
able that the shadow of death had scarcely fallen before it 
was withdrawn. The child of Jairus was scarcely dead when 
Jesus entered the house, and her soul yet hovered on the 
borderland of life. The dead man at the gate of Nain was 
but a few hours dead; for in the East burial follows instantly 
upon decease. There was at least some room in both these 
cases for the suspicion that death was not real, and Christ’s 
own words about the child of Jairus suggest that she was in 
a trance. Perhaps the disciples, ever prone to unbelief, had 
encouraged these suspicions in themselves; and this is why 
Jesus laid stress upon the reinvigoration of belief which will 
come to them in the act He is about to do in the cavern- 
grave of Lazarus. He will not leave Perea till the certainty 
of the actual death and funeral of Lazarus is put beyond 
question. For two days—days of silence and awful medita- 
tion, he remains “in the same place where He was.” With 
doubtful and astonished eyes the disciples watch Him, pale 
with the ecstasy of His own thoughts, withdrawn in the sol- 
emn hope and agony of prayer, passing in and out among 
them as a spirit, His heart far away in the grave of Lazarus, 
His soul pleading with His Father for the restoration of the 
man He loved. ‘Then, on the third day, His voice calls them 
at the dawn. In a kind of stupor they arise and follow Him, 
and know not, as they pass along the desert road, that they 
march in the triumphal procession of One who is the Resur- 
rection and the Life. 

In the meantime, at Bethany, other scenes are happening 
which afford an equally vivid glimpse into the characters of 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 311 


the bereaved sisters. Both sisters share the futile and now 
inexpressibly painful conviction, that if Jesus had been there 
Lazarus had not died. They cannot understand His strange 
delay. They supposed that the moment He had heard of the 
sickness of His friend He would have hastened to his couch ¢ 
for they knew Him well enough to know that He would scorn 
danger at the call of love. They wait in vain, scanning with 
tearful eyes the long road that winds downward from Beth- 
any to Jericho and the distant fords of Jordan. Their 
messenger returns with not so much as a hopeful word from 
Jesus. Mary, crushed and broken-spirited, watches in the 
cool of the eve from the palm-clad slopes of Bethany for the 
Friend who does not come. At last the morning breaks 
when all is over. The grey light falls upon the rigid face of 
Lazarus. The irretrievable calamity has come. There is 
nothing left but the last sad rites, the long farewells, and 
then the dead man, on his open bier, is carried to his tomb, 
and the stone is rolled across the doorway. All thought of 
help from Jesus is now at an end. They can only think of 
Him with the tender, sad resentment of women disappointed 
in their hero. They, no more than the disciples, have the 
least thought that all this bitterness of loss and of delay is 
but the darkened stage on which will enter, at His own hour, 
the Prince of Lite. 

If any spark of hope yet burned, it was in the bosom of 
Mary. We find her a little later on possessed of a great 
store of ointment of spikenard, very precious, with which she 
anointed the feet of Jesus. Was this the ointment which she 
had purchased for the last anointing of her brother? The 
final act in the sad drama of a Jewish death was the anoint- 
ing in the tomb. It was for the purposes of anointing or 
embalmment that the women came to the tomb of Christ 
Himself on the morning of the third day. But there are 


8192 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


features in this narrative which suggest that this last anoint- 
ing of the body of Lazarus in the tomb had been postponed, 
as though in obedience to some fugitive, incoherent, half-in- 
telligible hope that there was yet something to occur that eye 
had not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived. 
Well might Mary sit still in the house, listening with awe to 
these vague whispers of her heart, which she dared not com- 
municate to her less imaginative sister. She held the vase 
of precious spikenard in her trembling hands. She knew 
the sombre duty that the hour demanded of her, and yet she 
could not do it. Her mysterious reluctance was not based 
on reason. That Lazarus was truly dead she could not 
question. She herself had looked upon and shared all those 
significant and sad rites which attend a Jewish funeral. 
She had seen the body wrapped in the finest linen, the hair 
cut, and salt sprinkled on the silent breast. She had seen 
the sacred cloths which had contained the copy of the law 
which the dead man had used, laid with him on the bier, or 
wound around the body. She had seen his friends enter one 
by one, to stoop above the corpse, and take their leave of it, 
with the touching benediction, “ Depart in peace.” She had 
heard the chorus of the dead sung, his funeral oration ut- 
tered either in the house or on the way to the tomb, and the 
wailing of the death-flutes was ever in her ears. She had 
stood trembling in the doorway of the cavern, and had seen 
in the dim and awful gloom that white-robed effigy, prone 
and silent, that was once a living man. And yet she could 
not bring herself to think that the drama of her grief and 
loss was really over. She shrank from the performance of 
an act which locked the last door upon reluctant hope. Un- 
embalmed and unanointed Lazarus slept within his tomb, 
and Mary kept her precious ointment of spikenard against 
another burial. 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 3138 


Then at last Jesus comes—alas! too late, think both the 
sisters. The news flies from lip to lip that already He has 
been discerned, surrounded by His Galilean friends, moving 
slowly up the long hill-road that leads to Bethany. Martha, 
with her characteristic energy, is on her feet at once, and 
goes out to meet Him. It is she, once so cumbered with her 
household cares that she made but a restless listener to 
Christ’s discourses, who now rises to the loftiest heights of 
faith. She cannot forbear the tender natural reproach, 
“Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died ;” 
but it is followed instantly by a confession of adoring faith, 
not less remarkable than Peter’s at Ceesarea Philippi: “But 
I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God 
will give it Thee.” Mary soon joins her sister, repeating 
her reproach; she is dissolved in tears and can scarce speak 
at all. The mourners for the dead are with her, beating on 
their breasts, weeping, and uttering cries of clamorous grief. 
Jesus is overwhelmed before this outburst of sorrowful re- 
proach and agonized lamentation. He cannot bring Himself 
to enter the house where Lazarus has died. He thinks of 
all the happy hours spent beneath the roof of this hospitable 
house, now made desolate, and He weeps with those who 
weep. He overhears the whisper of the crowd, half-ironical, 
half-appreciative, “ Could not this man, who opened the eyes 
of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have 
died?” But amid all this dismay of the mourning crowd, 
all the tender agitation of His own mind, He holds to His 
deliberate purpose, of which He alone knows the secret. He 
asks to see the grave. The Jews suppose that He would 
fain weep there for the man He loved. He reaches it, and 
asks that the stone may be rolled away. Even then the 
sublime conjecture is not born in the hearts of the onlookers, 
that a thing miraculous and unimagined is about to happen. 


314 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Martha herself protests against what seems a vain and pain- 
ful act oi desecration. She shrinks from the too lively pic- 
ture which her sad imagination paints of this sacred corpse, 
unanointed, unembalmed, soiled with all the dishonors of 
the grave, suddenly dragged forth into the insolent light of 
day. But even while she speaks her heart stands still in 
mute suspense and dreadful expectation. Jesus stands in 
the doorway of the cavern-tomb and prays. His voice swells 
into a deepening note of triumph: “Father, I thank Thee 
that Thou hast heard Me, and I know that Thou hearest Me 
always.” or a moment there is silence that may be felt, as 
of a waiting world. ‘Then, in a loud voice, He cries, “ Laz- 
arus, come forth!” And in the tomb there is a stir, a move- 
ment, a sudden shock of life; and in the crowd a breathless 
horror. “And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and 
foot with grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a 
napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” 

It is in vain to seek for explanation of an act which tran- 
scends all human reason and experience. The difficulties of 
belief are great, but assuredly the difficulties of disbelief are 
greater still. Were reason and experience our sole guides, 
we should have no choice but to disbelieve; but what are 
reason and experience but finite instruments, incapable of 
measuring forces which are infinite? What is man himself 
but a creature incompletely fashioned, set amid the rushing 
splendors of a universe, which baffle and amaze him, and 
perpetually affirm his own incompetence of apprehension ? 
We have also to recall that impression of abnormal and sub- 
lime power in Jesus, which haunts the mind from the begin- 
ning of His history; the sense of expanding deity which 
filled His friends with awe; the growing energy of spiritual 
life, piercing through the folds of flesh like a powerful flame, 
until at last the body and its limitations seem dissolved in 


THE RAISING OF LAZARUS 315 


some higher potency of life. The miraculous energies of 
Jesus, ever growing stronger, are conditioned by the spiritual 
energies of His existence, which also are in the process of a 
daily growth. He who had already called Himself the Life 
does but complete His definition of Himself, when He de- 
clares at the spoliated grave of Lazarus, “I am the Resur- 
rection and the Life.” 

Measured in the scales of human reason, dissolved in the 
crucible of human experience, man must evermore affirm this 
act impossible, and therefore quite incredible; judged by 
what we know of Christ, the act 1s both possible and credi- 
ble. Man may be forgiven his obstinate and mournful 
doubts, when he reflects upon the long uniformity of decay 
and dissolution; the silence that weighs upon the grave; 
the voiceless void into which all the units of the human race 
sink, one by one, extinguished. But if the story of Jesus is 
historical at all, that story does unquestionably present us 
with One who was not as ordinary men, from whom we may 
expect actions which are not found in ordinary experience. 
Tt is the verdict which we pass on Christ Himself which 
must govern all the lesser verdicts which we pass upon His 
actions. Browning’s question— 


‘¢Can a mere man do this?” 


admits of but one reply. Browning also, in his great analysis 
of this very story, gives the clue to the one way in which it 
can be received : 


‘So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too— 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power, nor may’st conceive of mine; 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for thee!’” 


316 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


In other words, it is according to the measure in which we 
see the Divine in Jesus that His miracles become credible. 
It is not the miracle that proves Him Divine; it is His di- 
vinity that proves the miracle. 

On that sacred night at Bethany it was not Lazarus alone 
who was recovered from the grave, but the world itself. The 
gates of death rolled back, and the human race beheld itself 
incredibly ransomed and redeemed from destruction. The 
feast of life and hope was spread in those chambers, erst- 
while filled with the symbols of immutable decay, hung with 
the mournful trappings of corruption. The words spoken in 
Bethany have reverberated through the world. Beside a 
million graves the mourners of the dead have heard the gen- 
tle and commanding Voice which has declared “I am the 
Resurrection and the Life!” A beautiful Hebrew legend 
describes the grave as the place where two worlds meet and 
kiss. Two worlds met at the grave of Lazarus: the world 
of the flesh, dishonored, humiliated, reconciled to the shame 
of inevitable death; the world of the spirit, delivered from 
all mortal trammels, throbbing with a deathless energy, con- 
scious of the potency of life eternal. At the kiss of Christ 
the new sweet vigor of immortality poured itself into the 
frozen veins of a world that lay upon its bier. The scene is 
commemorated, is re-enacted, beside every grave where eyes, 
blind with tears, are suddenly illumined by the vision of the 
spirit which hovers pure and glad above the mortal raiment 
it has cast aside. But one more act was needed to assure 
the world that it was not deceived by fancied hopes; it was 
that Jesus Himself should put off the body of corruption, 
and should appear as One alive for evermore. This also 
was to come; and with it came the last and noblest defini- 
tion of life itself: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in 


? 


me. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
THE LAST RETREAT AND THE RETURN 


“Tr ye believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will 
ye believe though one rose from the dead,” said Jesus, at the 
close of the great spiritual drama of Dives, and His words 
found a sad vindication in the events which immediately fol- 
lowed His miracle at Bethany. The theorist, better ac- 
quainted with the movements of the philosophic mind than 
with the coarse characteristics of average human nature, 
would certainly suppose that in raising Lazarus Jesus com- 
pleted the edifice of His fame. Henceforth He should have 
been sacred and inviolable. The world should have turned in 
awe and gratitude to One possessed of such astounding pow- 
ers. Never again should it have been possible to question 
His authority, or the reality of the spiritual universe which 
He revealed. Again and again men have declared that all 
they needed to attain absolute faith in the existence of a 
spiritual universe is that one should be raised from the dead. 
They would be content with even less; with an authentic ap- 
parition, with a ghost, with some bright phantom, gliding 
upward from the grave, whom the sense should recognize as 
identical with the human form that had known the pangs of 
dissolution. But the close observer of ordinary human na- 
ture knows too well that these are but the fond illusions of 
the sentimentalist. Men in general are invincibly hostile to 
the miraculous. The best authenticated ghost-story leaves 
no impression on the general mind. The possessor of ab- 


normal powers excites not gratitude, but detestation, which 
317 


318 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


soon translates itself in active methods of repression. The 
alchemist and the necromancer have always lived hunted 
lives. History assures us in a thousand instances that men 
refuse to tolerate in others extraordinary powers which they 
themselves do not possess; and the possession of those 
powers, whether real or false, has often proved fatal to their 
possessors. 

In view of these truths of observation, we need scarcely 
be surprised to find that the miracle at Bethany, so far from 
helping Christ with His inveterate foes, really intensified 
their hatred, and precipitated His own death. The miracle 
was much discussed, and Bethany became the shrine of 
many pilgrimages. In the Temple courts and the bazaars of 
Jerusalem little else was talked about. Day by day the road 
to Bethany was thronged with hosts of curious visitors, who 
sought the cavern-tomb where Lazarus had been interred, or 
even looked upon the man raised up by Christ, and listened 
to his tale. No one doubted that the miracle had really 
taken place, not even the priests and Pharisees themselves. 
But to these bitter zealots, the truer the tale, the more difficult 
either to discredit or suppress it, the stronger grew their 
animosity to Jesus. They soon became thoroughly alarmed 
by the growing agitation of the popular mind. It seemed as 
though Jesus would triumph after all, and they were well 
aware that His triumph would mean their downfall. Some 
broader considerations of policy mingled with these petty 
fears. The nation itself existed in a state of difficult equilib- 
rium. The least popular disturbance might prove fatal to 
the last remains of nationality, by provoking the Romans to 
measures of retaliation. Among a people profoundly fanat- 
ical any agitation of the general mind was to be deprecated, 
for it was certain to find an issue in some kind of revyolu- 
tionary movement. Hence personal hatred and political ne- 


DAS IO RET KEATS AND RETURN 319 


cessities worked together for the overthrow of Jesus. Laz- 
arus himself was in danger; St. John tells us that the chief 
priests sought to kill him. How much more ardently would 
they seek to kill the Man who had raised him from the dead, 
in the hope that by such a crime they would crush a move- 
ment that had now become a peril to the whole existing 
order of society? 

It is of importance to understand this policy of the priests 
because it affords us the key to all the subsequent events in 
the career of Jesus. Hateful as it appears when thus baldly 
stated, yet it is a policy common to politicians and diplomat- 
ists, who govern men by astuteness rather than by principle, 
or whose only fixed principle is the dogged conservatism 
which defends at all costs an existing order. To such men the 
ereatest of all perils is the spread of new ideas. If in such acts 
of suppression wrongs are wrought, they are defended as neces- 
sary to the safety of the nation. Acts of cruelty and injustice 
to individuals are justified by the welfare of the greatest num- 
ber. Political necessity is pleaded for the sacrifice of heroes. 
We have no reason to suppose that the great governors and sol- 
diers who have carried out crusades of extermination, at the 
bidding of reactionary Governments, nor indeed the individ- 
uals who composed such Governments, were themselves men 
of abnormal cruelty ; nor need we accuse the Jewish priests 
of an extraordinary wickedness. They simply reasoned as 
the members of the Inquisition reasoned—themselves often 
men of admirable virtues—when they supposed they did 
God service in the barbarous suppression of all heretics. 
No power known to man is so capable of turning men of 
virtue into wolves and tigers as the plea of political or re- 
ligious necessity. Henceforth, to the close of Christ’s life, 
He is the victim of this supposed necessity. The question 
of the wisdom, truth, or value of His message will no more 


320 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


be discussed in the conclave of the priests. He must be 
crushed, and the only question is by what means. 

The exponent of this policy was Caiaphas, the supreme 
Pontiff of the Jewish faith. Immediately upon the news of 
the miracle at Bethany, the Sanhedrim was summoned. The 
Sanhedrim was a kind of sacred college, analogous to a con- 
clave of cardinals of the Roman Church, meeting usually in 
a chamber of the Temple, but on special occasions in the 
house of the Pontiff himself. Let us picture this august 
gathering. On the very evening of the day of the miracle, 
or at latest on the following day, messages were sent to the 
various members of the Sanhedrim, who were informed that 
a question of urgency was to be debated. One-third of the 
assembly consisted of priests, one-third of elders who repre- 
sented the laity, and the rest of scribes and lawyers. Each 
was a person of dignity; all were wealthy. The greatest 
figure in this ruling hierarchy was Annas, or Hanan, a for- 
mer Pontiff, who had been deposed by the Romans. He had 
nevertheless maintained his authority, though out of office, 
and upon him, more than on any other man, rests the odium 
of the death of Jesus. Caiaphas was his son-in-law, and a 
much weaker man than Hanan. It was notorious that Hanan 
was the power behind the pontifical throne, Caiaphas being 
in all things his obedient mouthpiece. 

Caiaphas had already resolved upon his policy. Although 
he was in truth but nominal High Priest, yet he was regarded 
with the utmost reverence for the sake of his office. When 
he entered the Sanhedrim all eyes were fixed on him as the 
infallible representative of God. He wore upon his breast 
the sacred symbols of his office: the Urim and the Thum- 
mim, two precious stones of dazzling splendor, sacredly pre- 
served from the days of Aaron, one of which signified Light 
and the other Right. It was believed that the power of 


BAS deere uh AeA N DARE RN 9) Sak 


prophecy still existed in the High Priest. He was the ap- 
pointed channel of the infinite wisdom of God, the mouth- 
piece of the secret counsels of heaven. John distinctly cred- 
its him with this power of prophecy; but he describes it as 
involuntary, and in this case as used against himself. 
Caiaphas himself makes no such pretension. He came to 
the council rather to browbeat its members than to instruct 
them. The meeting began with desultory conversation. 
One by one the members expressed their perplexity, their in- 
competence to suggest a course of action. But one fear was 
in every breast, and it is on this fear that Caiaphas adroitly 
plays. ‘Terror of the Romans, who have already curtailed 
the privileges of the priesthood, who openly covet the wealth 
of the Temple, who are notoriously ready to seize any excuse 
for spoliation, is a fixed idea in every mind. Caiaphas, when 
he rises to speak, puts the case with brutal frankness. The 
one way to retain priestly privilege is to conciliate the Ro- 
mans. Crush the offender, is his only policy. It is no time 
to debate the miracles of Jesus when His very existence is a 
peril and a threat. Even though it be conceded, for form’s 
sake, that He has done nothing worthy of death, yet it is ex- 
pedient He should die, rather than that the whole nation 
should perish. A death the more or less is of little conse- 
quence when the interests of the nation are involved ; the fu- 
ture will pardon a crime so patriotic, and will praise rather 
than denounce the men who compassed it. And amid the 
agitation of every kind of base fear, in the moral blindness 
and passion of the moment, this infamous counsel passes for 
inspired wisdom. “From that day forth they took counsel 
together for to put Him to death.” 

Some friend, possibly Nicodemus, acquainted Jesus with 
the proceedings of this secret conclave. It is difficult to fix 
the exact date of this meeting, but it was probably about a 

21 


322 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


month before the death of Christ, in the end of February or 
the beginning of March. The synoptic Gospels convey the 
impression that during this month this Sanhedrim was in 
constant session. John states that the determination to ar- 
rest Jesus was already taken. All the accounts agree that if 
Jesus was not instantly arrested, it was not from lack of will . 
on the part of His enemies, but lack of opportunity. ‘They 
feared the people, and were by no means sure that a public 
arrest would not foment the very tumult which they wished 
to suppress. Yet they had. every reason to complete their 
policy without delay, for the Passover was near, when there 
was a constant liability to public uproar from the crowded 
condition of Jerusalem. In the meantime Jesus Himself 
solved these perplexities of the Sanhedrim by disappearing 
from the neighborhood of Bethany. He not merely knew 
how He was to die, but when; it was meet that the perfect 
sacrifice and oblation of Himself should be made at the Pass- 
over, which was the day of national sacrifice. In all the sub- 
sequent history the initiative of events is with Him. The 
impression left upon the mind is of One who moves with a 
deliberate majesty toward His end; who lays down a life 
that is not taken from Him; who is the victim truly, but the 
Victor-victim. 

Jesus retired into the town of Ephraim, of which nothing 
is known, save that it was near the desert, and about sixteen 
miles from Jerusalem. Of all the holy sites in Palestine, 
none would be more truly sacred, were it discoverable, than 
this little town of Ephraim. Gethsemane itself has no more 
thrilling memories than this unknown town, where the last 
quiet days in the life of Christ were spent. It is possible 
that Jesus was unaccompanied in this retreat; or since John 
alone mentions Ephraim, we may conjecture that Christ took 
with Him only His favorite disciples, as in the case of the 


DAS WISE TREA TD ANDMREDURN . 323 


Transfiguration on Mount Hermon. We can but draw an 
imaginary picture, and there is but one topographical feature 
that may serve to guide us. Hphraim was certainly in the 
desert of Judea, that desert where the ministry of Jesus 
had commenced, where the Divine call had come, and 
the vision of the kingdoms of this world had been seen 
and rejected. The morning of His public life opened in 
these sterile grandeurs of the wilderness; here also came 
the evening. Before the culminating acts in the lives of the 
ereat heroes of faith and endeavor, one often notices a kind 
of silence, the thrilling pause before the curtain lifts upon 
the final scene. Such a silence Jesus knew in Ephraim. He 
was able to collect His thoughts, to review His life, to esti- 
mate both its inner significance of purpose, and its outward 
symmetry of event. Among these barren hills, to which the 
spring brought little beauty, we may picture Jesus wander- 
ing, lost in self-communion. He no longer needs to ask, 
“Whom do men say that 1 am?” His own soul gives in- 
dubitable answer that He is the Son of the Highest, ap- 
pointed to a destiny of divinest sacrifice. The tempter, who 
had once spoken among these solitudes in accents of com- 
mingled irony and seduction, appears no more; the Prince 
of this World has come, and has found nothing in Him. 
The eternal silence of the scene is no longer frightful; it is 
the silence of mighty forces resolved into harmony. And 
He also is tranquil; His own soul is silent with the pity and 
the patience of the sheep that is dumb before its shearers. 
He has reached the climax of the heroic soul, after which 
the world has no word left that it can speak—“Though he 
slay me, yet will I trust Him.” The peace of God which 
passeth understanding, because it is not known through the 
understanding, but les like a fragrance on the heart, is His, 


and nothing earthly can deprive Him of it, The hills of 


3294 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Ephraim witnessed not the despair of Jesus, but His victory. 
He had failed as the world counts failure, but it was a defeat 
which was greater far than victory. Transfigured now, not 
by outward agencies but by His own Divine Idea, He moves 
amid these bloomless hills, and when He leaves them it is 
with the perfect knowledge that the march of death has visi- 
bly begun. 

Yet it was at this time, perhaps in this place, that a re- 
quest was made to Christ, which shows how little were His 
own thoughts shared by those who loved Him best. ‘There 
came to Him the mother of James and John, full of ardent 
Messianic hope, and desiring that her sons should sit upon 
the right and left hand of Christ in the new kingdom which 
was to be established. We may trace this request to the 
new vigor of belief which had been kindled by the raising 
of Lazarus. It appears strange that such a request should 
have been made of One who was a fugitive, for whose arrest 
the order was already given; but it is not strange if we rec- 
ollect the effect upon the general mind which the miracle at 
Bethany had produced. How could this simple Galilean 
woman suspect that He who had raised another from the 
dead should Himself die by violence? How should she im- 
agine in her zeal and love that He who had saved others 
should have no power to save Himself? And if the request 
was presumptuous, yet the presumption was amply atoned 
for by the love and faith which inspired it. 

The mother of John and James was no ordinary woman. 
She had followed Christ from Galilee; henceforth she fol- 
lowed Him to the end; for the last glimpse we have of her 
is at the Cross, where she stands afar off, with Mary Magda- 
lene. On that tragic day she knew the meaning of the 
words which Christ addressed to her now. With eager zeal 
this woman who has been so true to Him pleads for her 


LAST RETREAT AND RETURN — 325 


sons, asking nothing for herself, and Jesus answers them 
rather than her: “Are ye able to drink of the cup that I 
shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I 
am baptized with?” They say unto Him, “ We are able.” 
And then with inftnite gentleness Jesus shows them that it 
is not the cup of royal welcome He will drink, but the cup 
of death. The son of Man has come “not to be ministered 
unto but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” 
In the very place where He had once refused the kingdoms 
of the world, He refuses them again. And of the startled 
eroup that listen to Him there is but one who has the least 
glimpse of what He means, and this is the woman herself. 
In that dreadful day when all the disciples have forsaken 
Him and fled, she alone followed Him to the Cross. They 
who had boasted their ability to drink the cup of shame will 
have refused it; she will have drunk it to the full, mingling 
with it the tears and sighs of a broken heart. Not in this 
instance only, but through all His life, women gave to Jesus 
a fidelity and love incomparably finer than men ever gave 
Him. It was they who gave Him back to the world, they 
who built the edifice of Christianity itself. And it is neither 
James nor John who sits beside Him in His kingdom, but 
they who ministered of their substance to His earthly needs, 
knew Him by the learning of the heart, were faithful to Him 
through all reproofs of time and circumstance, and were first 
in the Garden on the morning when His soul awoke. To 
that throne from which He rules the world Jesus was con- 
ducted by a sisterhood of women, among whom let us com- 
memorate one who in the darkest hour saw crowns upon His 
brow—this humble woman who lives only in her children’s 
names. 

The part which women played in the life of Jesus, and 
especially in its closing scenes, was to receive one more 


326 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


signal illustration at the close of this retreat at Ephraim. 
While Jesus thus explains once more to His disciples the 
nature of His mission, the question whether He will come to 
the feast is being eagerly debated in Jerusalem. It had be- 
come a truly national question. John, with a singularly 
vivid touch, pictures the priests, and the great crowd of pil- 
erims themselves, “as they stood in the Temple,’ exchang- 
ing surmises and prognostications—“ What think ye, that 
He will not come to the feast?” Next to the activities of 
the life of Christ nothing is so remarkable as its inactivities. 
The chart of destiny lies in His hands, and nothing human 
can hasten or retard its appointed processes. His life moves 
like a river to the sea, but it is a river that has not only 
foaming rapids, but many a pool of stillness where no cur- 
rent is perceptible. At His own time He leaves Ephraim, 
having eaten the last sacrament of silent self-communion. 
Perhaps He waited for His Galilean friends to join Him, 
that He might travel with them to the Passover, as He had 
done before. All that is certain is that He went through 
Jericho, where He once more affirmed the breadth of His 
sympathies by dining with Zaccheus. From Jericho a 
long and toilsome road, climbing several thousand feet 
through a parched and hideous country, leads to Jerusalem. 
By this road He traveled, reaching Bethany on the eve of 
the Passover, and at Bethany Martha and Mary made Him 
a final feast. 

It was a commemoration feast in honor of the raising of 
Lazarus. Lazarus sat at the head of the table, but his sis- 
ters were not with him. Martha, with her characteristic 
thought for others, served; Mary, full of her own thoughts, 
and already meditating in her heart a beautiful purpose, 
stood aside, and watched the feasters. Outside the open 
doors the bright spring evening drew toward dusk, and the 


LAST ‘RETREAT AND RETURN °327 


stars were slowly lit; within, the stars of hope and love 
shone, and a solemn joyousness was felt. Every glance and 
act of Lazarus struck a note of wonder. Behold he ate, he 
drank, he talked, whose lips had breathed the last sigh, 
whose eyes had looked into the face of Death! Who shall 
describe what these guests thought of him who was their 
host ?—with what a shudder they regarded him, with what 
an awful deference they spake with him, who had known 
what no mortal man had ever known before! On the im- 
aginative mind of Mary, all these thoughts drew a frieze of 
fire—pictures confused and terrible, like the pictures in a 
dream ; the realities of death and of the tomb, mingling with 
what seemed almost the unreality of this human festival. 
And then it was that the beautiful purpose took fashion in 
her heart. She bethought her of that precious spikenard 
bought for the anointing of her brother, and she can think 
of nothing better than to break it on the feet of Jesus, 
wearied with the toilsome pilgrimage from Jericho. The 
eift, not thought too precious for the dead, is surely not too 
costly for the living. The bliss of love possesses her: the 
uncalculating, fine extravagance of love, which puts no meas- 
ure to its self-abandonment. Some thought, it may be, 
that earlier anointing of the Lord in Bethany was in her 
mind; and she would fain not do less for Jesus than one 
who was a sinner did. Impurity has made its offering, and 
has been absolved; when purity brings its sacrifice shall 
Jesus be offended? And so, with swift step she passes to 
that chamber where she had wept her ineffectual tears over 
the brother who was dead; she takes the costly ointment 
from its place; she comes back and breaks the vase over 
those sacred feet that had bruised the head of Death, she 
anoints them with reverent hands and wipes them with the 
hairs of her head, “and the house was filled with the odor 


328 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of the ointment.” It was an act of exquisite grace and feel- 
ing. Mary is, like all women, a poet in her emotions, and 
her deed is one that thrills the hearts of all who feel. It is 
an act so beautiful that Christ foresaw it would belong to 
the sacred idylls of the world: wherever His gospel should 
be preached through all the world this thing should be told 
as a memorial of Mary. 

But the scene is not achieved without ungenerous criticism. 
There is one man who can see in it nothing beautiful or 
touching. It is for him nothing better than a foolish scene 
of sentiment. It is also an extravagance hateful to a man of 
parsimonious temper. ‘There can be little doubt that the 
disciples themselves at the moment felt with Judas. Ina 
later scene, when betrayal was openly discussed, they did 
not dissociate themselves from him; they each exclaimed in 
terrified humility, “Is it I who shall do this thing?” They 
would think, “What may be pardoned in a sinner, is not 
pardonable in a saint. It was natural for a woman used to 
the extravagance of a luxurious evil life, to be extravagant in 
her repentance ; but Mary should know better. She shculd 
order her life by a colder sense of responsibility, of decorum, 
and of duty. She might have sold this ointment for three 
hundred pence, and have given it to the poor.” Judas has 
especial cause for such a thought, for he is the treasurer of 
the little band. There is no need to give too great credence 
to John’s bitter declaration that the man was a thief. It is 
easy to read a man’s whole life in the light of a single mon- 
strous sin, and to say that what he became at last no doubt 
he always was, though his vices were concealed. Judas cer- 
tainly spoke no more than what the others thought; at all 
events, no one rebuked him with a word of protest. And 
his speech, whether it were an acted lie or not, had all the 
plausibility of virtue and good sense. Jesus Himself might 


LAST RETREAT AND RETURN — 329 


surely be imagined as preferring charity to the poor to any 
act of honor done to himself. He who had spoken so touch- 
ingly of the beggar at the rich man’s gate, would surely 
rather see the beggar fed than Himself made the object of a 
senseless waste. Let Judas bear what blame he may for a 
speech that was harsh, and unsympathetic with the poetry 
of the scene; yet after all it was but the kind of speech com- 
mon on the lips of narrow, good men, who rank as an ad- 
mirable virtue what is called a practical and economic tem- 
per. Judas may have spoken rashly, and have displayed a 
narrow mind; but we may at least give him credit for havy- 
ing spoken honestly, and all the more should we show this 
charity to one whose name became hereaiter loaded with so 
great a weight of odium. 

“To what purpose is this waste?” is the comment of 
Judas, and the indignant thought of his fellow-disciples. 
The beautiful reply of Jesus is, in effect, a defence of senti- 
ment. Economic considerations, and even social duties, are 
not the first things in human life: room must be left for the 
play of fine emotions and the instincts of the heart. In the 
commerce of a true affection gifts are exchanged, because af- 
fection needs some tangible expression of itself. How un- 
gracious would it be to forbid such acts because they cannot 
claim utility, and how impoverished would human life be- 
come were it governed on utilitarian principles alone! Love 
thrives upon its own redeeming irrationalties. It is divinely 
wasteful ; it is abandonment or nothing. It 


‘¢Seeketh not itself to please, 
Nor for itself hath any care, 
But for another gives it ease, 
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.” 


There is a kind of noble extravagance in human love, without 


330 THE. MAN CHRIST JESUS 


which the poet, the hero, the martyr would never reach their 
goals; for what do these great lovers of truth and of their 
fellow-men do but break the alabaster vase of life itself that 
the world may be filled with an immortal perfume? And 
then, with one heart-thrilling touch, Jesus gives the right 
significance to this act of Mary’s. What she does is against 
His burying, as though she anointed one already dead. 
When in six short days these captious friends of His see 
Him hanging slain upon the Cross, will they grudge Him 
Mary’s spikenard, or think that she had loved Him too well? 
The worst torture of bereavement to many a mourner is the 
memory of unkindness to the dead, of niggardly returns of 
tenderness, and grudged and scant emotions; but none has 
ever yet regretted that the dead have been too lavishly or too 
well loved. ‘The wasted spikenard will not seem wasted 
then. What kind of man is he who would seek to alienate 
to the service of the poor, however worthy or deserving, the 
last gift of human hands to One who gave His life for men? 
The poor themselves would disdain such base enrichment, 
and would count the thought an insult. 

To Judas himself the words were of sad significance. A 
little later Jesus employs the very word that Judas used in 
plausible reproach, and He employs it against Judas himself. 
Of all those whom God has given Him Jesus has lost but 
one—“the son of perdition,” or the son of waste. He who 
was so anxious over the waste of Mary’s ointment, had no 
eyes to see that it was he himself who was wasting. And it 
was through that very incapacity for tender sentiment, the 
exhibition of which in Mary had so much offended him, that 
the heart of Judas ran to waste. But Judas had no suspi- 
cion of the truth about himself. He found no hint of warn- 
ing in the dignified rebuke of Christ. As he and his fellow- 
disciples lett the house of Mary that night, no doubt they 


DASH RETREAT AND RE TURN: 331 


renewed the discussion on the midnight road, and each felt 
that the protest had been merited. Silence settled on the 
house of Mary; but beneath that roof One slept not. 
Through the hours of darkness He who had loved these 
men through all their errors, and would love them to the 
end, knew the pang of love misunderstood. The lofty nature 
never is interpreted aright by the nature that is less lofty 
and magnanimous. One thought alone brought balm to the 
wounded heart of Jesus, sleep to the wearied eyes: the time 
was near when all misunderstandings would dissolve, and 
from these hearts, baptized in grief, the flower of perfect love 
would spring at last. The day was coming when they would 
see Him risen from the dead, and in that day they would 
know Him as He was, and love Him with a deathless adora- 
tion. For that day He could afford to wait. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM 


WHEN Jesus awoke next morning it was with complete 
composure. His disciples, refractory as they had been to 
His teaching the night before, had returned to their alle- 
giance, and manifested no resentment. It is an affecting 
characteristic of these men that with all the narrowness of 
their intellectual apprehensions there was joined that peculiar 
nobility of temper which endures rebuke without cherishing 
offence. They doubted the wisdom of their Master, they 
criticized His conduct, but they never failed to follow Him. 
On this day they were to follow Him through one of the 
most exciting scenes of His career. It was a scene that 
seemed in such complete contradiction to the gloomy fore- 
casts of defeat to which Jesus had accustomed them, that 
they might be excused if now, at last, they thought the king- 
dom of an outward triumph had already come. 

We have already had occasion to note the extraordinary 
excitement which agitated the whole of Palestine at the 
period of the annual Passover celebrations. The spirit of 
patriotic and religious ardor ran like a flame throughout the 
land. ‘There was no populous city, no remote hamlet, that 
did not furnish its contingent to what was practically an as- 
sembly of the entire nation. These innumerable bands of 
pilgrims marched upon Jerusalem from every quarter, sing- 
ing the ancient Psalms of Israel, encouraging in one another 
a joyous ecstasy, full of eager hopes of some great national 


deliverance, to which the past history of their race, and es- 
332 


THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM = 333 


pecially the history of the Passover itself, gave vigorous 
sanction. Nor was it only from Palestine itself that this im- 
mense concourse was drawn. It included Jews and prose- 
lytes of every nation, who made their pilgrimage to the 
sacred shrine much as Christians of every creed still make 
an Easter pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 
or the followers of Mohammed journey in countless thou- 
sands year by year to Mecca. It has been calculated that 
not fewer than a million strangers thus gathered in Jerusa- 
lem at the time of the Passover. Camps sprang up outside 
the walls of Jerusalem; contiguous villages, like Bethany, 
were crowded to overflowing ; every road leading to the city 
was thronged with pilgrims, who daily increased in numbers 
as the solemn day drew near. In these circumstances we 
find the explanation of what was now to follow in the life of 
Jesus. His name and fame spread like the broadening rip- 
ples of a wave throughout this excited multitude. Bethany 
no longer afforded Him seclusion; it had become a suburb 
of Jerusalem. from lip to lip there passed the story of the 
raising of Lazarus, the rumored marvels of the Galilean min- 
istry, the many proofs of Messiahship which He had given. 
The interest of the Feast was centred not in the Temple but 
in Him. The very opposition He had met made Him the 
more notorious. And it produced, as was natural, a counter- 
feeling—a strong desire on the part of thousands to do Him 
some honor, to accord Him some ovation that should be 
worthy of His fame. 

How far Christ Himself was aware of this movement in 
His favor does not appear with any clearness in the narra- 
tives of the Evangelists. If His previous career may be 
taken as the index of His thoughts, we should certainly have 
expected Him to reject any intended ovation, as He had re- 
jected the proffered crown in Galilee. And there was the 


334 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


strongest reason of expediency why He should reject it. The 
priests, whom He knew to be His deadliest enemies, had 
hitherto entirely failed to manufacture any charge against 
Him which would ensure His condemnation. They could 
not put a man to death for merely doing good. Nor could 
they charge One with disaffection to the Roman Government 
—the only really capital offence—who had shown Himself 
consistently courteous to the Romans and respectful of their 
authority. Regarded merely as a policy, no policy could 
have been finer than that which Jesus had hitherto pursued. 
He had moved at a great altitude above all political conten- 
tions, and He was well aware that the scornful tolerance of 
Rome gave amnesty to every kind of religious or philosoph- 
ical faith, so long as it did not involve an active interfer- 
ence in politics. But to enter Jerusalem as an acclaimed 
Messiah was to renounce the privileges of a political non- 
combatant. It was to play directly into the hands of His 
enemies. It was to afford them good ground for that capital 
charge which hitherto they had sought in vain to substan- 
tiate. It was, in fact, nothing more nor less than to make 
His own death a certainty, except upon the quite improbable 
hypothesis that the whole nation would support Him in a 
successful revolution against the Roman power. 

How did it come to pass, then, that Jesus now permitted 
Himself to take a step so fatal to Himself, and to the con- 
tinuance of His mission? We may set aside at once the 
theory that Jesus in this case permitted Himself to be over- 
borne by the zeal of His friends, for that was a kind of weak- 
ness of which He was incapable. We may also dismiss the 
suggestion of a sudden thirst for popular fame, to which He 
had hitherto shown Himself utterly indifferent and even 
scornful. The true explanation lies in His own profound 
conviction that His life was near its close. To a dying man, 


THE; ENTRYcINEO JERUSALEM 383865 


or a man foredoomed to death, all human things have dwin- 
dled to a point and are equally significant or insignificant. 
It can matter nothing whether the populace applauds or con- 
demns, since nothing can alter the ineluctable decrees of des- 
tiny. ver since the sacred days of ecstasy and renunciation 
passed at Czsarea Philippi, Jesus had known His death a 
certainty ; and how strong this conviction was even at the 
present hour is shown in a reply which He gives to certain 
Greeks who desire to see Him. '‘l’o these men, filled with 
the spirit of homage toward a popular idol, Jesus replies that 
He is as a corn of wheat which must needs fall into the 
ground and die before it can bring forth fruit. So far is He 
from being deceived into proud hopes of earthly success by 
this late acclamation as the Messiah, that He is never so 
much aware as now of the hollowness of popularity. And 
for that very reason He can permit Himself to taste a cup 
which now has no intoxication for Him. He can accept a 
homage which does not inaugurate, but closes a career. And 
He can rejoice too, with a solemn satisfaction in which no 
pride is mingled, that for one brief hour, before He leaves 
the world, the claim to Messiahship which He has always 
made, stands vindicated. Consolations, endearments, praises, 
which might prove perilous in the heyday of life, may be 
permitted in its sunset. 

It was with these solemn self-communings that Jesus be- 
gan the last week of His life on the morning following the 
feast in Bethany. He had been anointed for His burial, and 
in the house of Lazarus had entered the shadow of death 
from which Lazarus had escaped. It would have been in ac- 
cord with all His habits if He had risen early, to meet the 
sunrise with prayer and meditation among the palms of 
Bethany, and so we may picture Him. But He could not 
long hide Himself from the crowd. As He returned to the 


336 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


house of Lazarus, the camps of pilgrims were awake, the 
long caravans were once more in movement, the whole coun- 
tryside was astir. Children watched Him with wondering 
eyes, groups of strangers discussed Him as He passed, and 
murmurs of admiration greeted Him on every side. His 
disciples, as they came from the various houses where they 
had slept, and ranged themselves beside Him, shared the 
general exultation. They watched Him with minds divided. 
His cheerful conversation at the morning meal reached them 
unheeded; they were listening to the growing clamor in the 
street. About noon He gave them an order at which their 
hearts leaped. ‘They were to go to a certain man in an ad- 
joining hamlet, probably a friend to the Galilean movement, 
and tell him that their Master wished to borrow his ass. 
Suddenly the purpose of Christ became clear to them; He 
intended riding into Jerusalem. They departed on their er- 
rand, their fear of the Sanhedrim melting when they saw the 
favor with which the crowd received them. Probably they 
passed the word as they went that Jesus was about to enter 
Jerusalem, and the excited multitude began to line the road 
in the hope of seeing Him. So in a few moments a great 
popular triumph was arranged, and when Jesus left the house 
of Lazarus it was to find the world awaiting Him. 

The first part of His journey was accomplished on foot, 
and unaccompanied by His disciples. Had a scornful Ro- 
man looked upon that scene, he might well have asked of the 
eager crowds, “ What went ye out for to see?” There is lit- 
tle doubt that Jesus wore that day, as He did throughout 
His ministry, the simple raiment of a Galilean peasant. 
This included the ordinary turban of pure white, wound 
about the head, with folds which fell upon the neck and 
shoulders as a protection from the sun. On his feet were 
sandals. His inner garment was close-fitting, “ without seam, 


LHESENTRY INETOVERUSALEM 837 


woven from the top throughout,” the work of some Galilean 
loom. Over this was worn an outer garment of plain blue, 
with fringes of white thread at the four corners. The phy- 
lacteries, small rolls of parehment bound in ostentation on 
the arm or forehead of the Pharisees, we may be sure He 
did not wear. Even these simple garments were worn and 
faded with much travel and exposure. But Kingship over 
men dwells not in royal robes, but in royalty of person; and 
there was none that day who did not feel the simple dignity 
of Jesus. He came, attended by the swelling approbation of 
the crowd. The road He took was the road that still exists, 
winding round the shoulder of Olivet, amid groves of figs 
and palms, until suddenly across a wide abyss Jerusalem is 
seen, rising like a city painted on the clouds. At some point 
in this road the disciples met their Master with the borrowed 
ass, on which He now rode through an increasing multitude. 
From Jerusalem itself, or from the camps of pilgrims outside 
the western gates, another multitude pressed forward to meet 
Him. Cries of Hosanna filled the air, with some the heart- 
felt tribute of pious lips to His authority, with others merely 
the expression of a wish for His good fortune or good luck. 
The old joyous enthusiasm which had made his earlier Gali- 
lean journeys a continual bridal procession seemed renewed, 
but on a vaster scale, and under the shadow of Jerusalem it- 
self. Palm-boughs, gathered from the gardens round Jeru- 
salem, began to strew the way; and those who had not these 
to offer, laid their outer garments in the road. Never was 
there scene of such enthusiasm; never was there crowd so 
infatuated with a sublime idea. To those tumultuous 
throngs it seemed that the knell of Rome had rung. The 
long and often disappointed dream of Jewish nationality was 
coming true. The golden age had dawned, for at last a Jew- 
ish King was riding to His capital in triumph. Amid this 


338 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


tumult of delight, which swept away all sober sense, no one 
was any longer capable of seeing things in plain and lucid 
outline: all swam through a dazzling mist; all caught the 
glamor of imagination. And least of all did the multitude 
perceive the growing sadness on the face of Jesus; least of 
all could any in these shouting throngs suppose that the 
Man to whom they did such honor was riding to His death. 

The most affecting incident in this triumphant progress is 
narrated by St. Luke alone. The road from Bethany to 
Jerusalem winds round the shoulder of Olivet, along the 
edge of a deep valley, so that no view of Jerusalem is pos- 
sible till more than half the journey is completed. Fertile 
gardens clothe these slopes of Olivet, with here and there an 
almond-tree, in spring-time covered with its blossoms of del- 
icate pink, and in the days of Christ many palms, which 
have long since disappeared, lifted their fan-shaped heads 
from this mass of foliage, or lined the road. The general 
effect even to-day is one of complete seclusion and of rural 
peace, with no hint whatever of the neighborhood of a great 
metropolis. At the distance of about a mile and a half from 
Bethany the road abruptly bends to the right, a narrow 
plateau of rock is reached, and with a startling suddenness 
the whole city is revealed. Nowhere perhaps in all the 
world is there to be attained a view of a metropolis so com- 
plete in itself or so dramatic in the suddenness of its revela- 
tion. The peculiar feature of Jerusalem is that it is a city 
sef upon a hill, or rather on an isolated bastion of rock, sur- 
rounded on three sides by profound and savage gorges; and 
at no point is this distinctive feature so plainly recognized 
as from this point of view upon the road to Bethany. Im- 
mediately opposite is the vast Temple area, occupied by the 
solitary dome of the Mosque of Omar. The grey walls of 
the city “rise from an abyss,” and behind them, dome on 


THEN ORY IN COVER USAILEM | 339 


dome, turret on turret, tower on tower, swells the long broken 
line of the city itself. Toward evening the effect is magical. 
Bathed in hues of brightest gold and deepest purple, raised 
at an aerial height above these gorges full of gloom, the city 
seems insubstantial as a city seen in dreams, ready to dis- 
solve at any moment at the falling of an enchanter’s wand. 
At such a moment the mind can comprehend the picture 
drawn in the Apocalypse of a new Jerusalem, let down from 
heaven, adorned as a bride for her husband, glowing with 
precious jewels and purple raiment: for Jerusalem appears 
indeed at such an hour a city “let down from heaven,” rather 
than belonging to the earth; and it was perhaps some mem- 
ory of sunsets on Jerusalem seen from this plateau of the 
Mount of Olives which inspired the gorgeous fantasies of 
John. 

Jt was at this point in the road that the procession of the 
Galileans halted; and if, amid the ruins of the city and the 
desolation of its suburbs, the view even to-day retains pow- 
erful elements of grandeur, how much more magnificent must 
it then have appeared on that day when the eyes of Jesus 
rested on it? Where now the Mosque of Omar rises, in the 
centre of so vast a space that it seems itself dwarfed and in- 
significant, there then stood the Temple, filling every corner 
of the area with its multiplied and splendid colonnades, with 
its superb and lofty edifices, which crowded to the very edge 
of the abyss, and rose from it like a glittering apparition. 
The whole city was planned upona scale of almost equal splen- 
dor. On every hand mansions of marble rose out of gardens of 
exquisite verdure; terrace upon terrace the city climbed, till 
in the northwest it was crowned by the porticoes of Herod’s 
palace; a vast aqueduct spanned the valley, and from the 
Temple to the upper city stretched a stately bridge; while 
the walls themselves, built of massive masonry and appar- 


340 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


ently impregnable to all assault, suggested a city “half as 
old as 'Time,” and meant to endure in undiminished strength 
and glory amid the thousandfold contentions and disruptions 
of the pigmy race of man. It was thus that these countless 
throngs of pilgrims thought of the sacred city, thus they 
viewed it with the ardent eyes of pride and love; nor was 
there anything in all they saw to check the exaltation of 
tueir thought. Jerusalem, beautiful for situation, the joy of 
the whole earth, would endure for ever, when Rome itself 
had vanished like a mist. Here should the tribes, not alone 
of Israel, come up to worship, but the alien races of mankind, 
eager to participate, however humbly, in the covenanted 
privileges of the Jew. If God had humbled the imperial 
city by permitting the Roman occupation, it was only for a 
time, and the hour was near when this tyranny would pass. 
Nay, that hour had already struck; the King of the Jews 
was coming to His own; for the first time in many dreary 
years they dared to use the forbidden word “Blessed be the 
King, who cometh in the name of the Lord” ; and with all 
the ardor of patriots and fanatics this applauding multitude 
pictured the city falling without a blow, and surrendering it- 
self with shouts of gladness to the sceptre of the Nazarene. 

Vain hopes, fond illusions, not shared by Him whom they 
acclaimed! Where all was hope and pride and triumph, He 
alone was not elated; He alone saw the city with the proph- 
et’s brooding eye; and as the procession halted on this rock 
plateau, from which the whole vast panorama lay unfolded, 
an utter sadness fell upon His heart. From hill and tower 
the splendor faded, and He saw the shadow of irreparable 
disaster deepening into darkest night. “And when He was 
come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it,” says St. 
Luke. Nor was it the outburst of a nature of exquisite sen- 
sitiveness, wrought into a passion of hysteric tears by the 


THE ENTRY INTO) JERUSALEM © 841 


excitement of the scene, or by any painful thought of per- 
sonal defeat. We could understand such thoughts, for the 
hour of triumph often has its tears. But these tears were 
the tears of the prophet-patriot weeping for his race. He 
saw with all too clear a vision the goal to which events were 
moving. He had sought to recreate in Israel the old and 
pure ideals of a theocracy, and He had failed. Had the Jew 
accepted these ideals, had the race chosen of God to be the 
depository of all spiritual truth been content with its mis- 
sion, then had it endured in peace and triumph. But Jeru- 
salem, in seeking to outrival the material Empire of the Ro- 
mans, had rejected the things that belonged to her peace, and 
had hidden her eyes from her true mission. Sooner or later 
the inevitable collision must come, and the kingdom of clay 
must be broken by the kingdom of iron. The pride, the ar- 
rogance, the worldliness, the ambition of the priesthood, at 
once foolish and intrepid, was working out the national ruin. 
And He could have prevented that ruin. A priesthood 
deeply impregnated and invigorated by His teaching would 
have dwelt secure in the efficacy of spiritual ideas, and would 
have ruled the world not by force of arms, but by the force 
of truth. But Jerusalem had chosen that worst part, which 
she must now expiate till the “the last syllable of recorded 
time.” And so, to the consternation of His followers, Jesus 
wept what must have seemed to them tears of weakness in 
the very hour when courage was most needed to affirm of 
Himself what they affirmed of Him, that He was a King be- 
fore whom Jerusalem would kneel. He wept over the city, 
and from His lips broke forth the words, all too faithfully 
fulfilled in later days, and in the lifetime of many who now 
heard them with indignant wonder: “For the days shall 
come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about 
thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every 


342 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy chil- 
dren within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone 
upon another, because thou knewest not the hour of thy vis- 
itation |” 

And then the procession swept on again, but it was in 
diminished triumph. A chill had fallen on the temper of the 
multitude, as though an icy wind had issued from the gener- 
ous sunlight. The crowd swept down the hill, past the Gar- 
den of Gethsemane, and crossed the valley of the Kedron, to 
that Golden Gate which led directly to the Temple; but the 
nearer it approached the Temple the more evident was the 
discouragement among the people. It is St. Matthew who 
indicates by a single subtle touch this change in the temper 
of the populace, which is unintelligible until we recollect the 
tears of Jesus and the prophecy of desolation which He had 
uttered against the city as He drew near to it. As far as the 
rock plateau beside the road where Jesus halted, all had been 
tumultuous enthusiasm. The expulsion of the Romans from 
the sacred city seemed so near and certain that all restraints 
of fear had been relaxed, and with one accord the crowd had 
called Jesus King, and so had been guilty of sedition. But 
now they no longer dare to utter a word so perilous. Jeru- 
salem itself, imperturbable and frowning, with its guarded 
gates, where the Roman soldiers stood in stolid scorn, may 
have dismayed them; the fear of the priests, who were known 
to be in opposition to Jesus, may have dismayed them yet 
more, especially as they thronged into the Temple courts 
where they were supreme; but most of all they were dis- 
mayed by the words and conduct of Christ Himself. The 
whole city was moved to meet them; from bazaars and Tem- 
ple courts the multitude thronged forth, and from the walls 
and roofs a thousand eyes looked down. “Who is this?” 
cried the people, with that inflection of superiority and scorn, 


THE ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM = 343 


never so bitter as on the lips of a Jerusalem Jew in address- 
ing Galileans. And the Galileans no longer dare to answer, 
“This is the King who cometh in the name of the Lord.” 
They are no longer willing to commit themselves to so rash 
and daring an assertion about One who has wept in the mo- 
ment of His triumph, and has uttered woes when He should 
have uttered the trumpet-cry of the victorious captain. 
“This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth of Galilee,” is their 
tame reply. They may safely call Him this, but they will 
yield Him no more regal title. They are glad, perhaps, to 
slink away into the less public quarters of the city, fearful 
of their own rashness, conscious of their own folly; Jesus 
has quenched all their patriotic ardor with His own tears. 
And He has sown with His words the seeds of disappoint- 
ment and resentment, which will spring up rapidly into re- 
venge; for who so revengeful on his leader as the patriot 
who thinks himself deluded or betrayed, or made ridiculous 
by the folly of. one whom he had thought a hero? It is, 
after all, nothing strange in human nature that this same 
crowd who began the week with Hosannas should conclude 
it with cries of “Crucify Him!” 

Yet this entry into Jerusalem was far from the fiasco it 
appears to be, if we have regard to these considerations 
alone. It is certain that the authority of Christ never stood 
so high on this memorable day. The Pharisees themselves 
complain with truth that the world has gone after Him. He 
enters the Temple once more to cleanse it of its traffickers in 
gold, as He had done at the commencement of His ministry. 
Bitter chagrin reigns among the priests, who perceive more 
clearly than ever that a public arrest is impossible. Yet at 
the end of the day Jesus stands almost alone. St. Mark, 
who says nothing of this second cleansing of the Temple, 
adds one vivid touch to his narrative which conveys a deep 


344 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


impression of the solitude of Jesus when the day neared its 
close: “He looked round about upon all things” in the 
Temple, in a grieved, majestic silence, as one who takes fare- 
well of a familiar scene. One thing only in the long day 
left a sense of pleasure in His mind. The Hosannas of the 
crowd terminated at the Temple courts; but the little chil- 
dren, more eager than their elders, and innocently daring, 
had followed Him into the Temple itself with joyous accla- 
mations. It was fitting that He who had made a little child 
the type of all that was adorable, should receive the last trib- 
ute of adoration which human lips would ever give Him from 
a crowd of little children. He looked round about on every- 
thing; but in that array of many pictures which had filled 
the day, none was so sweet and fair as the picture of these 
babes and sucklings, out of whose mouths God had ordained 
sincerer praise than the brethren of His own flesh would 
yield Him. Through the silence of the evening their voices 
still made music for Him; and it was with these childish 
voices echoing in His heart that He left the Temple, and 
went out into the sunset, to travel back to Bethany, which 
was to be His home until the better home of God received 
Him into its eternal hospitalities. 


CHAPTER XXV 
THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 


Even yet Jesus might have been saved from the malevo- 
lence of His enemies. We may recall what has been said in 
an earlier chapter upon the immense popularity which He 
had achieved by resisting the exactions of the priests, and 
the second cleansing of the Temple must have greatly rein- 
forced that popularity. In spite of waves of timidity which 
swept over the fickle populace, Jesus remained a popular 
idol. A definite proclamation of leadership or kingship 
from His lips would certainly have rallied to Him a host of 
followers. It was precisely this contingency which the San- 
hedrim most dreaded. Jerusalem at Passover-time resembled 
a vast arsenal, crammed with combustible material, which a 
single spark of fanaticism might explode. It was natural 
that the priests should recognize in Jesus their most danger- 
ous countryman, and there was genuine political astuteness 
in the argument of Caiaphas that the peace of the nation de- 
manded His death. But it was also abundantly clear that 
this policy had no chance of successful execution unless 
Jesus could be detached from His followers. Long ago His 
arrest had been ordered, and yet no man dared to lay a hand 
upon Him for fear of the people. He came and went as He 
willed, in spite of threats and warnings. It was the old 
story of a jealous oligarchy fighting for its life against a 
democratic movement which it hated, and feared even more 
than it hated. 


The principle of fanaticism, strong in all Oriental peoples, 
345 


346 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


manifested its most alarming energy in the Jew. We must 
take full account of this fanaticism of Jewish character in 
estimating the existing situation in Jerusalem. At first sight 
nothing could seem more unlikely than that there should 
have been the least chance of success in a Jewish rising 
against the Roman power. Yet a few years later, in the 
May of 66, such a rising was successful. An exasperated 
nation is capable of a reckless daring which seems incredible 
to the historian. It was so in 66, when Jerusalem rose 
against a despotism it could no longer endure, and the le- 
gions of Rome were crushed by the violence of an unarmed 
mob. In a few weeks Jerusalem was evacuated by the Ro- 
mans, the tower of Antonia was burned, its half-starved de- 
fenders were massacred, and the revolt spread through the 
whole of Palestine. With such a page of history before us, 
it is impossible to doubt that had Jesus boldly declared a 
revolution on His entry into Jerusalem, the movement might 
have been attended with success. The Roman garrison was 
small, and the Roman authority had suffered seriously at 
the hands of Pontius Pilate. Herod, who was residing in 
Jerusalem at this time, was not unwilling to foment a revolt 
which might serve his own ambitious ends. The million 
Passover pilgrims present in the city, all of whom were fa- 
natically attached to the idea of Jewish nationality, afforded 
material for the revolt. Never did Jesus come nearer to 
grasping the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them 
than in this last week in Jerusalem. At a single word, at 
once bold and decisive, the banner of a national insurrection 
would have been unfurled; and, when we think of the aston- 
ishing success of a Mahomet, who shall say what triumph 
might not have awaited a resolute and ardent Liberator ? 
That word was not spoken, but the key to the situation is 
that the priests could not know that it never would be 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 347 


spoken. On the contrary, they fully expected it; and not 
without reason. ‘The boldness of Jesus in defying their au- 
thority argued a similar boldness in inaugurating a campaign 
against the Roman usurpation. They saw Jesus pass in 
triumph through the Golden Gate, they saw their own choir- 
boys of the Temple rushing to His side and receiving Him 
with plaudits. Had not Jesus already offended them be- 
yond forgiveness by the bold nobility of His religious teach- 
ing, they would perhaps have been ready to support Him. 
But they recognized in Him a revolutionary more dangerous 
to them than to the Romans. They had no wish to help 
into power a Dictator who would certainly turn His power 
against themselves. Hence at this critical moment they 
were bound to make common cause with the Romans. Cx- 
sar appeared to them a less terrible despot than Jesus. 
Cesar at least protected their privileges and their wealth, 
which Jesus would have destroyed. By some means Jesus 
must be isolated from His followers: this seemed the one 
practicable plan of action. He must be made to appear 
ridiculous to them. He must appear to have betrayed their 
hopes. Was it possible to counteract His popularity with 
such a stroke of strategy? They knew His exquisite sim- 
plicity of mind. They knew that, in spite of His formidable 
genius, He often spoke or acted like a dreamer or a child. 
Things hung in such a delicate poise that a single injudi- 
cious word might prove fatal to His movement, and be the 
making of theirs; and so they set themselves to play on His 
simplicity, in the hope that He Himself would precipitate a 
ruin which they, with all their malice, were unable to 
achieve. 

How deep the alarm was among what may be called “the 
party of order,” how bitter the hatred, may be judged from 
the nature of the combination formed for the execution of 


348 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


their plot. We have already seen that between the Herodi- 
ans, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, the strongest animos- 
ities prevailed ; but we now find them acting together. The 
plot is to entrap Jesus into some injudicious speech about 
the capitation tax, imposed on the nation by the Romans. 
This was a tax bitterly resented by the entire population, 
not only because it affirmed the political subjugation of the 
nation, but because it destroyed the sacred theocratic prin- 
ciple of Jewish history. To pay tribute to Czsar was to 
acquiesce in his authority, and to disclaim the authority of 
God, as the Eternal King of Israel. It excited the same 
kind of agitation which the imposition of ship-money ex- 
cited among the Puritans. This strange people, who ac- 
tually had to be restrained by law lest they cast too large a 
portion of their wealth into the Temple treasury, resisted to 
the death the payment of the very moderate tax of a single 
drachma per head to the imperial exchequer. They even 
had violent religious scruples about handling the imperial 
coinage at all, going so far as to drop it into water, as if by 
accident, that it might be cleansed before they touched it. 
There was, perhaps, no single subject upon which all parties 
were so thoroughly agreed as the hatefulness and iniquity of 
this taxation, and it was clearly impossible for any patriotic 
leader who did not share these views to expect the least 
chance of success. Even the Herodian himself, mere time- 
server as he was, felt much as Naaman felt when he en- 
tered the house of Rimmon; his position was so rad- 
ically false that he could conciliate rebuke only by abject 
apology. 

It argues a deep sense of the originality of Christ’s char- 
acter that these men should have supposed that on such a 
matter the views of Jesus should have differed from those of 
His countrymen. They proposed to submit to Him the 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 349 


question of the rightfulness of tribute, with the definite ex- 
pectation that He would reply in a way that would probably 
be so novel as to offend all parties. The Pharisees them- 
selves, knowing how Christ regarded them, with much astute- 
ness kept in the background. They sent some of their dis- 
ciples, probably young men, who could play the part of 
inquirers after truth; and with them were certain Herodians 
who could not be suspected of favoring the idea of Jewish 
independence. The aim of this adroit deputation was to 
make it appear that there had arisen among themselves a dis- 
cussion on the rightfulness of tribute, which they now brought 
to Jesus for settlement, according to the general custom which 
recognized the eminent Rabbi as the arbiter of all disputes. 
Hostility to Jesus was carefully veiled, so that if possible He 
might be taken off His guard. They approach Him with the 
utmost suavity, with the anxious air of perplexed but honest 
persons, who find themselves in difficulties. “Master,” they 
say, “we know that Thou art true, and teachest the way of 
God in truth, neither carest Thou for any man, for Thou re- 
gardest not the person of men. ‘Tell us, therefore, what 
thinkest Thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cesar or 
not?” A question so plainly put can hardly admit of any 
but a plain and definite reply, they think. And they can 
imagine but two replies, either one of which would be fatal 
to Jesus. If He decides that the tribute is not lawful, which 
means that it is a patriotic duty to resist it, He at once de- 
clares Himself a revolutionary leader, and will be liable to 
arrest by the Roman authorities. If He declares that it is 
lawful, and must be accepted without resistance, He will at 
once alienate His own followers. No third reply seems pos- 
sible ; and yet the question is put with a certain ill-concealed 
trepidation, which suggests that however fortified by logic 
were the minds of these men, yet they were haunted by a 


350 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


just suspicion of the formidable genius of Jesus, and of His 
novel methods of thought. 

This suspicion was well-grounded. A mind of great sim- 
plicity often proves itself too much for the logician, and that 
very simplicity of Christ, on which they hoped to play, 
proves itself the one incalculable element which wrecks their 
plot. The crowd waits for His reply, for this scene was en- 
acted in the Temple, under conditions of the widest publicity. 
They wait in breathless silence, for every one feels this to be 
a crucial question. Some.are already angered at the tears 
of Jesus over Jerusalem, and at His dismal prophecies of its 
destruction. Others, who took part in the triumphal march 
from Bethany, are eager to forget what seems upon reflection 
a moment of hysteria in Jesus, and to believe of Him what 
their own patriotic hopes would lead them to believe. With 
the Pharisees themselves there may have been a stronger 
disposition to rally to His side than is at first apparent. 
History teaches us conclusively that no human character, no 
human movement, can be painted in plain black or white; 
they are a thousand delicate gradations between hostility and 
loyalty, crime and virtue. The man who engages in a plot 
often does so with hesitations which he keeps to himself: 
reservations and saving clauses which he dare not publish. 
It is certain that in that matter of the cleansing of the Tem- 
ple the Pharisees were on the side of Christ. It is certain 
also that if they could have imagined Him strong enough to 
affirm the national idea they would have supported Him, for 
there was not one of them who was not a zealot for that 
idea. ‘They would even have pardoned His invectives against 
themselves, upon the principle that a party must not be too 
fastidious in the use of the instrument by which its ends are 
gained. The case may be very briefly put. The Pharisees 
were willing to join with the priests in the overthrow of 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 351 


Jesus, on the supposition that He was a dangerous impostor. 
They were at one with the priests in recognizing the national 
peril which His popularity involved. But that popularity 
was only perilous in the degree of its misdirection. If it 
eould be utilized for the ends of a national deliverance, if 
they could assure themselves that a national insurrection was 
hkely to succeed, they would have been willing to accept 
Jesus as an instrument, to be kept or discarded as circum- 
stances might decide. Hence the truce signed between them- 
selves and the Herodians, with whom they were at daggers 
drawn. Hence also in this adroit combination against Jesus 
there was the proviso that the combination might act for 
Jesus instead of against Him, if things should unexpectedly 
turn out in favor of the conspirators. 

So the crowd waits for the reply, the unspoken thought in 
each mind being that the national destinies are at stake. 
That reply comes at last with the swiftness of a flash of 
lightning. “Hypocrites,” Jesus cries, “why do ye tempt 
Me?” He asks to see the tribute money, the common 
drachma, stamped with the effigy and titles of the reigning 
Cesar. “ Whose image and superscription is this?” He 
asks. “It is Casar’s,” they reply. “Render then unto 
Cxesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the 
things that are God’s,”’ is His decision. It is, as they had 
more than half expected, the reply of a dreamer and a child, 
with something of that rare profundity which is the last art 
of simplicity. It is a reply which has the singular demerit 
of offending all parties. What is to be feared from so simple 
an enthusiast? thinks the Herodian. What is to be hoped? 
thinks the national party. As for the crowd itself, the fatal 
sentence rung in every mind, “ Render unto Cesar the things 
that are Casar’s.” It is true that it is qualified by the loftier 
sentence, “And unto God the things that are God’s;” but 


302 THE MAN; CHRIST yous 


erowds do not respect nor remember qualifications. To 
them it seems, and not without reason, that Jesus has trifled 
away His chances of a crown. His words fall upon them in 
raillery, and derision directed against themselves is the un- 
pardonable sin of oratory with a mob. Im any case, even 
those best disposed toward Him feel that He is guilty of an 
evasion. He has not given a direct reply, either because He 
dare not or He could not. His friendship with the Gentiles, 
His many reported acts of courtesy toward Roman officials, 
are remembered against Him. He becomes a suspect in the 
eye of every patriot. That extraordinary outburst of rage 
which filled the courts of Pilate but a few days later with a 
mob that clamored for His crucifixion, is easily explained 
when we remember these things. Their preference for Bar- 
abbas, a man under sentence of death for sedition, becomes 
intelligible. Jesus had not dared to be seditious, and Bar- 
abbas had. He had led His followers to the hour of struggle 
only to laugh at them, to tell them that it was all a mistake, 
to retreat in the moment when the trumpet should have 
sounded the assault. He was no patriot; He was not even 
courageous ; He was but a crazed enthusiast. Through that 
great tumultuous city, whispered on the lips of disappointed 
friends, shouted by angry patriots, discussed with frantic 
bitterness by thousands upon thousands of excited pilgrims, 
spread the fatal news, “He has counselled us to pay tribute 
to Cesar.” And then and there began to swell the hoarse 
ery, “Crucify Him, for He is not fit to live!” 

The reply was certainly not free from the spirit of raillery, 
and yet it was in no sense an evasion. It was rather a lucid 
exposition of the principles which were to guide His follow- 
ers in their relation to the State, and which did control the 
action of His Church through all its earlier eras. The Jew 
was in reality an anarchist, who was opposed to any form of 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 309 


civil government. Jesus, on the contrary, recognized in civil 
government an administration of the Divine order. Man is 
not an individual only, but a social unit. Civil government 
expresses this social unity in human life. It does certain 
things for the whole community, and in its name, for which 
the whole community must pay. Cesar had certainly done 
something for the Jew, for the Roman power was the one 
unfluctuating force which provided social security amid the 
endless feuds and bitter rivalries of Judea. The contention 
of the Jew was that all civil force was infamous. ‘Taxation, 
which was the symbol of this force, was therefore infamous. 
Christ saw the world with wider vision, and with truer in- 
sight. Social order is bound up with civil government; tax- 
ation is the price which the individual pays for that order ; 
and it would be absurd to argue that taxation may be op- 
tional, or that the units of society can accept the advantages 
of social life without submitting to the burdens they impose. 
The tithe paid to God is in reality not a more religious act 
than the tax paid to Czesar; each is in its way the admission 
of a Divine order which imposes corresponding obligations, 

This still leaves the difficulty of a corrupt or tyrannical 
civil government to be considered. Is it at no time and 
under no circumstances right to resist an evil government ? 
St. Paul may no doubt be quoted as counselling complete 
subservience: “The powers that be are ordained of God. 
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi- 
nance of God.” But St. Paul may also be quoted as suc- 
cessfully resisting the civil power when it was guilty of pal- 
pable injustice ; for who so keen as he to claim his rights as 
a Roman citizen, to insist upon both justice and respect from 
civil magistrates, and even in the last resource to appeal te 
Cesar himself for redress? The real point of Christ’s reply 
is in its second clause. He who renders unto God all that 

23 


354 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


God claims, will soon discover that his allegiance to Ca- 
sar has its limits. This was the crowning offence of 
Christianity to the Roman, that it transferred the supreme 
allegiance of man from Cesar to God. It set up, in effect, a 
higher tribunal, and made it final. Rome discovered to her 
consternation that the early Christian life obeyed a new 
centre of gravity: that while the Christian was willing 
enough to pay his tax to Cesar he would not pay his con- 
science; that while he behaved as the best of citizens in his 
outward demeanor, yet he reserved rights in himself which 
the jealousy of Cwsar could not touch; and all the great 
persecutions directed by Rome against the new faith sprang 
from the profound irritation of this discovery. This saying 
of Christ's rightly understood is therefore the declaration of 
a real spiritual liberty. It inaugurated the eternal struggle 
of the rights of the human conscience against those who con- 
fuse civil jurisdiction with spiritual jurisdiction. The mere 
question of taxation seemed to Christ trivial; the larger 
question was the nature of that obedience which man should 
give to God. Christ's kingdom was pre-eminently a king- 
dom of the truth, and not of this world. It is little wonder 
that in this hour of excited patriotism His words were not 
understood; but no words have been more potent in direct- 
ing human thought, as we may see if we care to trace the * 
principles which guided the development of early Christian- 
ity. For, without a single effort at insurrection, even under 
provocation of the most infamous injustice, the first Chris- 
tian communities spread a subtle flame of insurrection 
through all the Western nations; without becoming revolu- 
tionists, they achieved the greatest revolution in history; 
avoiding anarchy, and any course that led to anarchy, the 
old order of society dissolved before the novel force they in- 
troduced; seeking no power, they became all-powerful; and 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 355 


the whole secret of their extraordinary triumph was that 
they did dutifully the two things which Christ commanded 
them to do: they gave to Cesar the things which were due 
to him, they also gave to God the things which were God’s. 

After this discussion in the Temple, so pregnant with 
meaning and result, because it marks the great renunciation 
of Christ, His final and deliberate rejection of the Jewish 
crown, the other discussions of this memorable day appear 
of little moment. Yet they are of some importance as show- 
ing how concerted was the attack made upon Him. It would 
seem as though His foes, with some unconscious instinct of 
a final scene in the great drama now’close at hand, ranged 
themselves against Him for a last encounter with the best 
weapons which their ingenuity and malice could devise. No 
sooner do the Herodians and Pharisees leave the stage than 
the Sadducees appear. ‘T’hey are governed by the same pol- 
icy of detaching Jesus from His followers, by putting Him 
in the wrong with them. They propose a coarse question 
about the resurrection in its relation to marriage, which is 
manifestly insincere since they themselves do not believe in 
any resurrection. It was not only a question coarse in it- 
self, but it had been debated coarsely by the Rabbis, whose 
refinements of casuistry had no parallel refinements of taste. 
The reply of Jesus is beautiful in its simplicity and truth. 
Marriage, as He conceives it, is not an accommodation of the 
flesh, but the eternal sacrament of the spirit. In the resur- 
rection flesh is dissolved for ever; men and women no longer 
marry or are given in marriage, but “are as the angels of 
God in heaven.” 

‘‘The earthly joys lay palpable— 
A taint in each distinct as well; 
The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 


Above them, but as truly were 
Taintless—so, in their nature best.” 


356 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


And evermore the pure soul, to whom marriage is the unity 
of will and spirit, will say with the dying Pompilia of 
Browning’s great poem— 


‘Oh, how right it is! How like Jesus Christ 
To say that.” 


From the vision of a heaven defiled and belittled by the 
grossest realism the eyes of the multitude are turned for one 
clear instant to the heaven of the spirit, where fleshly bond- 
ages and pleasures are alike forgotten. or the first time 
there dawns upon the Jewish mind, still filled with gross- 
ness as in the days when their fathers followed Moloch and 
worked abominations in the groves of Ashtoreth, a true con- 
ception of heaven and its taintless life; and it is uttered 
with the thrilling note of One who already stands upon its 
threshold, and awaits its opening door. 

Replies so lofty as these, teachings of such astonishing 
lucidity and penetration, should have silenced opposition ; 
but the reverse appears to have been the case. There was 
still another question to be asked, designed like all the rest 
to draw from Jesus some reply that should put Him at odds 
with the popular conceptions of religion. It was an old 
question, and one which He had repeatedly answered ; but 
there was a certain deadly astuteness in pressing it upon 
Him now, because in all this vast crowd of pilgrims there 
was not one who was not a fanatical upholder of the Mosaic 
law. It was to keep the law of Moses that they had as- 
sembled from every corner of the world; to keep that law 
perfectly in the daily ordering of life was the supreme aim 
of every pious Jew. But this aim, noble as it might appear 
in itself, had been degraded by an inconceivable littleness of 
mind, which spent itself on every kind of puerile casuistry. 
The Rabbis had invented more than six hundred precepts, 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 357 


each one of which was binding. The whole formed a chain, 
which was no stronger than its weakest link; for he who 
failed in one precept failed in all. Some of the Rabbis had 
so confused moral principles with external observances, that 
they actually taught that the keeping of the law was synony- 
mous with a proper attention to fringes and phylacteries, and 
that he who diligently observed these merely sumptuary 
edicts might “be regarded as one who had kept the whole 
law.” “Which, then, was the great commandment?” And 
Jesus answers, as He has often answered, that there is but 
one great commandment—to love God with the full consent 
of heart and soul and mind; and if there is a second com- 
mandment, it is that men should love their neighbors as 
themselves. The reply is really nothing more than a pene- 
trating paraphrase of the Decalogue, which begins with the 
word “God,” and ends with the word “neighbor.” It is a 
paraphrase so noble and enlightened that at any other time 
it would have won applause; but to this fanatical multitude, 
in this hour of popular excitement, it seemed the careless 
speech of a freethinker, who in His heart despised the law. 
And so it did but serve to perplex and alienate yet further 
those ready to swear allegiance to Him as a political Mes- 
siah. It was the last act in His great renunciation. He 
had submitted Himself in turn to the inquisition of the He- 
rodians, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees, and in each case 
had so answered as to cast His vote for His own death. He 
had refused the crown of Israel, and with His own hands 
had woven the Crown of Thorns. 

As if to mark His own sense of the irreparable breach be- 
tween Himself and His nation, Jesus follows these replies 
with open and terrible denunciations of the rulers of the peo- 
ple. He describes them as hypocrites, as fools, as blind 
guides; he accuses them of the peculiarly odious form of 


358 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


avarice which exists by the spoliation of the widow; of that 
utter lack of moral perception which attaches more value to 
the niceties of ritual than to justice, mercy, and faith; of a 
bitter propagandist spirit which will stoop to any meanness 
to secure a convert; of hostility to truth, hatred of light, in- 
competence to recognize Divine messengers and ministries ; 
and, finally, He sums up their characters in one scathing 
epigram: they slay the prophets and then build their sepul- 
chres! Yet even in this storm of denunciation softer notes 
are heard. The lips that had breathed so many blessings 
trembled with Divine pity when they uttered these reluctant 
curses. “O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often 
would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens together under her wings, and ye 
would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate.” 
There is no mistaking the accent of finality, of farewell, that 
breathes in these words. He will see Jerusalem no more, 
save with the dimmed eyes of One who is driven as a culprit 
through its streets; His work is done. Not for a single in- 
stant, either in His triumph or His controversy, does His in- 
timate knowledge of Himself, and of the end to which He 
travels, waver. ‘The ordinary characteristics of the martyr 
the struggle against circumstances, half-frantic, half-heroic ; 
the fluctuating moods; the dismay of failure, the triumph of 
recovered hope—none of these things are found in Him now, 
nor at any later time. His fortitude, His meekness, His 
daring, have set the pattern of all martyrdom; yet they pos- 
sess qualities of their own which no martyr has displayed. 





He remains throughout complete Master of the situation. 
Those who think to play on his simplicity do but afford Him 
opportunity for the complete display of Himself. He utters 
no word He would retract; none that the world does not find 


THE GREAT RENUNCIATION 359 


pregnant and vital; none that is not essential to His mission. 
Never is Jesus so truly great, so much the victor, as in this 
moment when the coils of a great conspiracy seem most se- 
curely fastened on Him. 

One last episode of this day of controversy and renuncia- 
tion may be noted. Wearied with these discussions and 
with the tumult of opinion they provoked, Jesus turns from 
the crowd, and seeks an interval of quiet in one of those col- 
onnades of the Temple, which lead to the Court of the 
Women. We gather from St. Matthew that His disciples ac- 
companied Him; and they, alarmed and pained by what He 
had said about the approaching desolation of the holy 
“House,” call His attention to the massive grandeurs of the 
Temple, which in truth appear imperishable. But His eyes 
are turned not upon the glories of the Temple, but toward a 
certain widow, manifestly indigent, who is approaching the 
Shapharoth, or trumpet-shaped boxes which were placed un- 
der the colonnades to receive the free-will offerings of the 
people. The woman possesses but two “Perutahs,” the 
smallest of all coins, ninety-six of which 1aade the denar, 
whose value was about sevenpence. And it is all her living; 
all that she possesses for the needs of the day; yet without 
scruple she casts it into the treasury. And at the sight of 
this real munificence, for the true measure of all generosity 
is the degree of sacrifice which it involves, the eye of Jesus 
kindles. There are still in the world the truly pious, who 
are incorrupt amid all the corruptions of religion. There are 
still those for whom piety is neither ritual nor ostentation, 
but sacrifice and faith. From among those, the humble and 
the good, shall His kingdom be built up. This woman has 
that “upright heart and pure” which God prefers before all 
temples built with hands. It is she who gives the true meas- 
ure of that innate nobility and piety, which is the hope of the 


360 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


human race, and its truest glory. She is the living exposi- 
tion of His great saying that to love God and man is the sum 
and essence of all sincere religion. And so, with one quiet 
word, He drops a crown upon those unsuspecting brows, and 
invests this humble woman with a glory which shall survive 
all the glories of this Temple, built by a man for whom re- 
ligion was subservient to intrigue, and served by priests for 
whom gain was godliness. From that hour Jesus enters the 
Temple no more. How eminently characteristic of Him it is, 
that His last act in leaving the Temple is to recognize the 
beauty of a pure and quiet heart! It is the final affirmation 
of that great truth which gave the lofty keynote to all His 
teaching: “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him, 
must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 
THE TRAITOR 


THroucH the deep shadows of the now nearing end one 
sinister figure has arrested every eye—Judas of Kerioth. On 
no human head has such a cloud of infamy descended: in 
all human history there is no man who has been regarded 
with such complete abhorrence. His entire biography is in- 
cluded in a dozen sentences, yet so vivid is each touch that 
the effect is of a portrait etched in “lines of living fire.” The 
Evangelists cannot conceal their detestation when they speak 
of him. Jesus Himself says of him that it had been better 
had he not been born. The most merciful of men have 
judged him guilty of inexpiable crime. Not unnaturally this 
deadly unanimity of reprobation has provoked protest and 
apology, and it may be freely admitted that there are some 
elements in the character and conduct of Judas which de- 
serve a much more impartial judgment than they have 
received. 

Judas was the only disciple who was not a Galilean. He 
came from the South, where the spirit of Judaism was much 
stronger than in the North, and much more intolerant. When 
and where Jesus met him we cannot tell, but it was probably 
in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. The unwritten chapters 
in the history of Judas may be easily supplied from what we 
know of the movements of the time, and of the relations of 
Christ with His other disciples. There was certainly an 
earlier and different Judas, who possessed some striking 


characteristics of mind and spirit, or he would never have 
361 


362 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


been deliberately selected by Jesus for the toils and honors 
of the Apostolate. It is natural that John, never himself 
conspicuous for charity, should speak of him in the bitterest 
terms, for he was deeply penetrated by a horror of his crime; 
but the action of Christ in calling Judas to the Apostolate 
must be weighed against the virulent denunciation of his fel- 
low-disciple. Somewhere in the past, which can only be con- 
jectured, we may discern a youthful Judas, growing up in the 
devout adherence of the Jewish faith, conscious of unusual 
powers and distinguished by a sombre heat of enthusiasm, 
filled with patriotic ardor and deeply moved by the Mes- 
sianic hope. In due time this youth finds himself in the 
presence of Jesus of Nazareth. He listens to a voice which 
stirs his heart as no human voice has ever stirred it. He 
feels the eye of Jesus resting on him in solicitation and inti- 
mate appeal. The current of his life is turned instantly, and 
he leaves all to follow this new Divine Teacher. His sacri- 
fice is more complete than even John’s or Peter’s, for he 
leaves his own country and submits to the national odium 
which attaches to all things Galilean. But it is probable 
that he was never quite at home among his comrades. He 
was an alien, and an alien who claimed superiority. He was 
just the sort of man to resent the kind of primacy claimed by 
Peter and James and John. He was disappointed to dis- 
cover that he was not admitted into the more intimate circle 
of discipleship. He was left outside the house of Jairus 
while the three favorite disciples were admitted; he remained 
in Cesarea Philippi when they ascended Hermon with their 
Lord; and he, the proud child of a pure Judaism, was less 
able to bear this neglect than the Galilean disciples. Some 
dignity he did obtain; he became the treasurer for the small 
community; but that was not what he wanted. And so there 
grew up in the heart of this man that kind of rankling envy 


THE, PRATLOR 363 


common to those who think their claims neglected and their 
genius despised; who fill subordinate positions when they 
believe themselves fitted for the highest prize of leadership ; 
who have made great sacrifices for a cause, without any cor- 
responding gain or even praise. When Jesus, very early in 
His ministry, said that Judas had a devil, was it not this 
devil of jealousy and envy which He discerned in Him? 
History certainly teaches us that jealousy is capable of the 
most diabolic crimes, and especially the crimes of treachery 
and revenge. 

The statement made by John that Judas was a thief, to 
which reference has been already made, must be dismissed 
as unproved. It 1s not corroborated by the other Evangelists. 
It is, indeed, suggested by Peter in the brief account of the 
Apostolate which he gives at the first meeting of the Chris- 
tian community after the Resurrection. Peter states that 
“this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity,” 
but the phrase is ambiguous. “The reward of iniquity” 
probably means the money which he took for the betrayal of 
Christ; although, in view of the unlikelihood of Judas being 
able to acquire land in the short time which elapsed between 
the compact with the priests and the arrest of Christ, it may 
be construed as a reference to a course of fraud which had 
extended over some years. On the other hand, we have to 
consider how unlikely it was that Jesus would have per- 
mitted a known thief to remain a disciple, and to become the 
treasurer of the funds of the community. Jesus Himself at 
no time made this accusation, and it is entirely inconsistent 
with His character that He should have endured such a crime 
in silence. He who rebuked Peter and called him Satan 
could hardly have allowed Judas to pass unrebuked. We 
have also to remember that the relations of the other disci- 
ples with Judas appear to have been very friendly to the 


364 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


last. They agreed with him in his protest against the ex- 
travagance of Mary. They made no complaint against him 
to Jesus. They sat with him at the Last Supper, and gave 
no hint by their conduct that they even suspected him of 
perfidy. Judas was certainly with them, not only at Beth- 
any, but in the triumphal entrance into Jerusalem. He re- 
turned with them to Bethany after this event, for it is speci- 
fically stated that “the twelve” were with Jesus on that 
memorable evening. When we consider the degree of jeal- 
ousy which had always existed among the disciples; the ' 
protests which were raised against the arrogance of the sons 
of Zebedee; the strifes for pre-eminence, and all the spirit 
of criticism which these strifes engendered, it is certain that 
if Judas had been a deliberate thief we must have heard of it 
long before. That he was parsimonious we know; that he 
had a tendency to avarice we may suspect; and that John, 
writing after the event which cast a lurid light on the char- 
acter of the man, should have exaggerated these tendencies 
into a deliberate charge of theft is not unintelligible, when 
we notice the rancor with which he speaks of Judas, and 
remember that John had already shown himself specially 
capable of bitter and narrow judgments. But the solitary 
word of John is not sufficient to give authority to a charge 
so incredible. We must therefore regard his words as the 
exaggeration of a mind capable of violent repulsions, and 
strongly influenced by the crowning infamy of his unfortunate 
fellow-disciple. 
When was this act of monstrous treachery first designed 
in the mind of Judas, and what were the causes? We may 
conclude, without much fear of contradiction, that it was the 
final sequence in a long process of irritation, disgust, and 
weariness at the course which events were taking. The re- 


buke which Jesus had addressed to all the disciples in the 


Mat Peere eet Oe 365 


house of Mary would fall with special weight on Judas, be: 
cause it was he who had protested against the waste of the 
ointment. His hopes were rekindled on the next day by the 
unexpected triumph of Jesus ; but no one would more resent 
than he the tears of Jesus over Jerusalem, and a man of his 
temperament would judge them tears of weakness. It was 
with a mind divided he reviewed the events of this great day. 
Jesus had accepted homage as a king, and yet had made 
kingship impossible by the offence which He had given to 
all parties. To the hard, practical mind of the man of 
Kerioth this would appear as criminal trifling with great op- 
portunities. It would seem almost deliberate betrayal on 
the part of Jesus, who had led His disciples to the point of 
ecstatic expectation, only to disappoint them; and in the 
dark, resentful mind of Judas the angry thought took shape 
that He who betrayed deserved betrayal. The events of the 
subsequent day deepened his disappointment and resent- 
ment. ‘They made it clear to him that Jesus never would 
and never could head the national party. With a singular 
perversity his Master had chosen that very moment when 
diplomacy was most needed to attach the people to Himself, 
to insult the Pharisees, ridicule the Sadducees, offend the 
patriots, and finally to denounce the most influential parties 
in the nation in terms more bitter than even John the Baptist 
had ever used. What was to be hoped for such a cause led 
by such a leader? Judas could see no hope. The cause he 
had served so long, amid many personal slights, had no 
future. Jesus would certainly be killed sooner or later, and 
in the general disaster His disciples would be involved. The 
farce of an impossible Messiahship could not be sustained 
more than a few days at the most; but there was yet time 
for those who had the requisite sagacity to make their peace 
with the priests. So Judas reasoned, and it is the reasoning 


366 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of a man thoroughly disillusioned, weary of the part he 
plays, anxious to save something out of the wreck of his per- 
sonal fortunes, and keenly conscious in all his astute debate 
of personal grudges to be avenged, and wounded self-love 
that cries for reparation. 

On the evening of the day when Jesus made His great re- 
nunciation, Judas sought the chief priests, and made his 
covenant of blood with them. A singular phrase used by St. 
Luke, and repeated by St. John, gives us a vivid glimpse of 
the condition of mind of the unhappy man: Satan had en- 
tered into him. He was in truth a man demented. His 
jealous passion had swollen into such force that he was no 
longer capable of sober reason. He was mad with resent- 
ment, anger, and despair: the dream of his life was shat- 
tered, and the spirit of revenge had become his only guide. 
This is certainly the most charitable, and it is the most 
probable view, of his subsequent behavior. From the mo- 
ment when he seeks the priests to the bitter last act of the 
appalling tragedy, we are dealing with a madman, capable 
of a madman’s cunning, and passing through paroxysms of 
frantic rage to the final paroxysm of frantic grief and inef- 
fectual remorse. 

This view of his conduct is sustained by what we know of 
his interview with the priests. As we must dismiss John’s 
accusation of deliberate theft as unproved, so we must dis- 
miss the theory that the master motive in his betrayal of 
Jesus was love of gain. The thirty pieces of silver which 
the priests agreed to pay him for his treachery was a con- 
temptible price for the kind of service Judas was prepared 
to render them. An avaricious man would not have sold 
himself for naught after this fashion. Nor would an avari- 
cious man have flung the money down at the feet of the 
priests in the hour when his plot was consummated. Avarice 


THE, DRATTIOR 367 


is the coldest of all vices. It is impervious to passion, and 
is not hable to the tumult of emotion which filled the last 
hours of Judas. Had avarice been the master motive of 
Judas, he would not only have insisted on a far larger bribe, 
which he well knew the priests would have gladly given him, 
but his subsequent history would have been quite different. 
He would have remained unmoved by the tragedy he had 
provoked ; he would have congratulated himself that he had 
escaped the general disaster ; he would have gone about with 
a brazen brow, would have settled down in Jerusalem in a 
position of ease, and would have sought further advantage 
from a priesthood which he had already laid under eternal 
obligations. He did none of these things. His whole con- 
duct shows that it was not money but revenge which he 
desired. He was ready to accept money, but it was only be- 
cause the bribe made the compact sure. It was the pledge 
that the priests would not fail to fulfil their part of the bar- 
gain. ‘To inflict a deadly blow upon a Master who had 
slighted, reproved, and disappointed him; to prove his 
capacity which had been unrecognized by the harm that he 
could do; to achieve at all costs the ruin of a cause he had 
renounced—these were the real motives of Judas, and money 
could have been no more than a secondary consideration 
amid the clash of thoughts and passions so diabolic. 

The action of the priests in entering into compact with the 
unhappy man is made intelligible by those difficulties of 
their position to which allusion has been already made. 
Judas found them in session, discussing the old insoluble 
problem of what they were to do with Jesus. They dared 
not arrest Him publicly. They had not dared to do it on 
His return to Bethany, and still less was it possible after the 
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Nor were they willing that 
the Romans should arrest Him as a preacher of sedition. 


368 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


This would have precipitated the very revolution which they 
dreaded. The inflammable fanaticism of the populace would 
have been at once ignited by the spectacle of their hero in 
the power of the oppressors of their country. All His faults 
would have been forgiven; the only thing remembered would 
have been that He was a Jew, that He was a Prophet, and 
that He had given good cause for being hailed as the Mes- 
siah. Revolt would have broken out, Jesus would have been 
snatched from the hands of the hated Gentiles, and the 
streets of Jerusalem would have run with blood. The words 
used by St. Luke give an accurate description of the situa- 
tion: the priests “were glad” when they saw Judas, and 
“covenanted to give him money,” because he promised to 
betray Jesus into their hands, “in the absence of the multi- 
tude,” or “without tumult.” He was precisely the sort of 
tool they had long desired to find, and desired in vain. They 
had never anticipated the good fortune of detaching one of 
Christ’s own apostles, and making him the instrument of 
their revenge. Here was a man who knew the habits of 
Jesus, and was still in the confidence of his Master. By his 
means Jesus could be secretly arrested. They could strike 
their blow before it was expected, and with a complete guar- 
antee of its success. The populace would know nothing 
till they heard of His condemnation; and although they 
might have risen against the Romans, they would hardly 
dare to rebel against the priests. If, in the end, it became 
necessary to deliver Him into the hands of the Romans 
that He might be put to death, His position would be to- 
tally altered by their previous condemnation. He would 
then appear not as a martyred patriot but as a dangerous 
blasphemer. So, on that fatal night, Judas found himself 
welcomed with an effusion little expected, and full of gratifi- 
cation to his jealous vanity. At last he would play a part, 


Die DRALTOR 369 


and a great part, before the world. At last his abilities 
would be recognized, and his revenge satisfied. He would 
be applauded as the man who had appeared in a moment 
full of peril to save his country from disaster; and not once 
did it occur to his excited mind that he was the mere tool of 
men more cunning and unscrupulous than himself. 

It has often been suggested that the deliberate betrayal of 
Jesus was merely an intrigue on the part of Judas to force 
the hand of Jesus. The theory has plausibility. It is quite 
possible that he may have imagined that, in the event of His 
arrest, Jesus would prove Himself quite able to take care of 
Himself. It was hardly credible that One who had worked 
so many miracles should hesitate to work one more miracle 
on His own behalf when He knew that His life was in dan- 
ger. ‘The overwhelming consternation of Judas when he 
finds that Jesus is ruined beyond remedy is significant of 
some such thoughts as these. The man who plans a great 
conspiracy often finds too late that he has created a force 
which he cannot control. He finds himself swept into ex- 
cesses which he deplores, and pleads, not untruthfully, that 
these excesses were furthest from his intention. A Robes- 
pierre made the same excuse for his reign of murder, a Louis 
XIV. pleaded the same extenuation for the long train of na- 
tional disasters which followed the revocation of the edict of 
Nantes. But the general judgment of mankind refuses to 
accept these apologies. Judas knew perfectly well that the 
priests desired the death of Christ. He knew when he took 
their bribe that he was making himself an accessory to that 
death. He had no right to calculate that his plot might 
miscarry, while he took every means to make it a success. 
He had no justification for the hope that Christ might extri- 
cate Himself from the coil of circumstances which he him- 
self created. Nor have we the least indication that Judas 

24 


370 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


was at any moment guilty of this self-delusion. He had 
come to a point when he did not wish his Master to succeed, 
because he thought Him incapable of succeeding in the one 
manner which he himself approved. ‘The spirit of spite and 
revenge is a sufficient explanation of his actions. He had 
passed beyond the range of sober calculation, and equally 
beyond a lurking faith in plausible contingencies. He had 
become a bitterer foe of Jesus than the priests themselves, 
because he hated Him with all the rancor of the apostate. 
His subsequent remorse afforded no contradiction of this 
state of mind. The worst conspirator may feel some re- 
morse when he sees the full consequences of his conduct, 
without for an instant disputing the logic of events. Char- 
itable writers, fascinated by the problem of analyzing a char- 
acter of much subtlety, may make the excuse for Judas that 
he was a diplomatist who sought to serve his Lord by 
crooked means, and fell into the pit which he himself had 
dug; but Judas makes no such apology for himself. 

Nor can it be pleaded that Judas merely acted as a disap- 
pointed enthusiast. All the disciples were disappointed en- 
thusiasts, but only he sought revenge on Christ by betraying 
Him. It is sometimes said that the sin of Peter in denying 
his Lord was scarcely less than that of Judas in betraying 
Him ; but the sins were totally different in quality and na- 
ture. Any man, under the extreme pressure of danger or 
temptation, may deny the convictions that are really dear to 
him; but there is a gulf as wide as the world between such 
denial and deliberate betrayal. The most heroic of men in 
some hour of utter darkness may sign his retraction of a 
truth as Cranmer did, and afterward may nobly expiate his 
crime as Cranmer did, by thrusting his unworthy hand into 
the martyr flame; that is weakness of the will, it is fail- 
ure of courage, but it is not deliberate betrayal. But in 


A rie eR ALTLOR 371 


all the closing acts of Judas it is the deliberation of his 
wickedness that is so dreadful. Every step is studied, every 
move is calculated. He works out his plot with a steadfast 
eye, an unflinching hand. He will not stir till he is sure of 
his compact; he studies with astute intelligence the hour 
and place of his crime; all is as planned and orderly as the 
strategy of some great battle. Had he broken utterly from 
Christ in the moment when he went over to the side of the 
priests, we might at least have pitied him, and, in part, re- 
spected him. We might have numbered him with those 
misguided patriots who burn the idols they had once adored 
from motives which are tortuously honest. But Judas does 
not take this course. It is an essential part of his hideous 
compact with the priests that he must play the part of the 
loyal friend of Jesus to the last. He moves upon his road 
toward tragic infamy without compunction, without one back- 
ward thought, without a single pang of pity or of old affec- 
tion. The most vivid touch in the appalling picture is the 
smile with which he asks his Master, who has just declared 
His knowledge that He will be betrayed—“ Lord, is it I?” 
Judas knows in that moment that Christ is perfectly aware 
of his conspiracy, and yet he says, “Is it 1?” Heis so 
sure of success, so confident that it is no longer in the power 
of the heavy-hearted Galilean to thwart his scheme, that he 
can mock Him with the insult, “Is it I?” Mborally cold, 
intellectually astute, and now filled with the deliberate mad- 
ness of revenge, it is little wonder that the world has dis- 
cerned in this hard, impenetrable wickedness of Judas a sin 
beyond forgiveness, in which no germ of renovating good 
can be discerned. 

It must be left to moralists to determine how far any dep- 
ravation of the human heart is final, how far any sin is be- 
yond forgiveness; but certainly the sin which all just men 


372 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


find most difficult of condonation is perfidy. There is a pe- 
culiar meanness in perfidy at which the gorge rises. The 
plghted word broken, the solemn vow betrayed, the concealed 
disloyalty of the foe who still plays the part of friend, com- 
pose a kind of sin more perilous to the foundations of society 
than vice itself. It is a sin which strikes at the root of all 
collective life, by making all human intercourse impossible. 
Society exists by virtue of an exigent and delicate sense of 
honor in its members. He who is called a gentleman is not 
such by the merit of a superior education, nor superficial re- 
finement of manner, nor elaborate acquaintance with the 
usage of society; but rather by a lively sense of honor, a 
delicacy of conscience and of mind, a sensitiveness to self- 
blame, a scrupulous standard of personal integrity, and an 
overmastering passion for an unsullied mind and life. Honor 
forbids a man the least falsity of word or act; it rises above 
all considerations of personal advantage; it is deeply sus- 
picious of such advantage, even when it is most justified ; it 
is a spirit of relentless self-judgment and self-discrimination 
brought to bear on the entire purpose and conduct of life. 
And it is because men recognize in honor the fine flower of 
all virtue, that they are more sensible of the infamy of crimes 
of dishonor than of crimes of passion. Perfidy to a friend, 
to a cause, to a country, thus becomes the offence which men, 
in proportion to their own sense of honor, find it most dif_i- 
cult to forgive. And there can be little doubt that Jesus 
shared these feelings. He knew how to distinguish, and 
did distinguish sharply, between the sin of Peter and the sin 
of Judas. There is an exquisite tenderness in Christ's man- 
ner to Peter, even while He reveals to the surprised disciple 
the cowardice of which he will be guilty; but Jesus cannot 
regard Judas with tenderness. His charity is exhausted be- 
fore a crime so dreadful. He feels that remonstrance or re- 


WEL RDA Wi ole 


buke is alike impossible. He sees the unhappy man posting 
to his doom amid such a whirl and clamor of every furious 
passion that no wiser voice can now reach him, or recall 
him to himself. And so Christ marks His sense of the irre- 
trievable crime of Judas in a single sentence: “The Son of 
Man goeth as it is written of Him; but woe unto that man 
by whom He is betrayed! It had been good for that man if 
he had not been born.” 

If Judas was utterly insensible to this plain warning and 
rebuke of Christ, it must be remembered that Peter was 
equally insensible to the same kind of warning. Yet here, 
again, we feel that we are comparing things not strictly com- 
parable. It was natural that Peter should not admit the pos- 
sibility of weakness in the coming trial, because he had hith- 
erto given no sign of such weakness. He had always figured 
as the strong man among the disciples, and he was conscious 
of no disloyal thought. But with Judas the case was differ- 
ent, because he knew himself already guilty of the charge 
which Jesus brought against him. He was not only a traitor, 
but a detected traitor. Jesus makes it clear to him that his 
plot has already failed. Judas prepares an ambush for a 
victim who knows his every movement. An ordinary con- 
spirator would have recognized the futility of his plot, and 
would have felt the absurdity of his own position. But Judas 
was not an ordinary conspirator; he was a man intoxicated 
by rage and vanity. Vanity enraged is a kind of madness, 
and is, indeed, the frequent cause of madness. Argument is 
wasted on the man who crowns himself with straws and 
thinks himself a king. Throughout the closing scenes in the 
history of Judas, it is such a creature who confronts us. He 
is at once dreadful, pitiable, and absurd. He listens with a 
mocking smile of superiority to words which would have 
humbled any sane man into the dust. His impudent ef- 


374 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


frontery knows no bounds. And yet there is a vein of dia- 
bolical astuteness in all his reasoning. He perceives what 
no other disciple can perceive—that Jesus means to die. 
Some instinct tells him that Jesus will allow Himself to be 
betrayed. And it matters nothing to him whether Jesus 
steps into the mesh prepared for Him blindly or with open 
eyes, so long as he himself gets the credit for His downfall. 
Hence the rebuke of Christ, which would have brought any 
ordinary traitor to his knees, has no effect on Judas. He 
smiles his evil smile, and goes upon his way, too blind with 
vanity, too drunk with self-complacency to comprehend his 
own dishonor or discern the fate to which it leads. 

Yet through all the thoughts of Judas there runs a vein of 
sad sincerity. This becomes most apparent in the sequel of 
his history. It is a man filled with the deadly sincerity of 
hatred who makes the compact of betrayal with the priests ; 
it is a man filled with the agonizing sincerity of remorse who 
appears before them when the plot on which he set his heart 
has succeeded but too well. He had been the hireling of 
priests who despised him while they used him; but he is not 
so base as they. His violent hatred grows respectable be- 
side their cold and calculating craft. He has acted like a 
madman, for whom allowance may be made; but they have 
acted as deliberate murderers. He has planned his personal 
vendetta with a deadly earnestness; but they are merely as- 
tute politicians, with whom self-interest is dominant. Judas 
sees now, with horror unspeakable, that he has been mistaken 
in his estimate of Jesus. His consternation, like his previous 
hatred, knows no bounds. He hears only the preliminary 
examination of Christ before the priests, but that 1s enough 
to convince him that he has betrayed innocent blood. The 
blood-money which he has taken he dare not keep. He 
rushes to the Temple, frantic with despair, and flings the ac- 


Dita RA OR 375 


cursed bribe at the feet of the priests, and makes his agonized 
confession. ‘The reply of the priests reveals a depth of evil 
not found in the tortured heart of Judas. “What is that to 
us?” they cry. “See thou to it.” And then the first pangs 
of mortal agony begin in Judas. He cannot survive his own 
self-contempt. He cannot regard his sin as capable of par- 
don or retrieval. It is not in him to make truce with him- 
self, to patch up the past, to rehabilitate his own self-respect. 
The madness of ignoble vanity gives place to the almost no- 
ble madness of intolerable self-accusation and despair. He 
will not live to see the end of Jesus. He will make 
the only reparation in his power by dying on the 
same day when his betrayed and martyred Lord shall die. 
“And he cast down the pieces of silver in the Temple, and 
departed, and went out, and hanged himself.” 

Suicide is a crime, and yet there are circumstances in 
which it almost rehabilitates a character, and does something 
to atone for the errors of a lifetime. There are occasions 
when it is less base to die than to live. Judas would have 
been tenfold more odious had he lived, contented in his in- 
famy, prospering on his crime, and insensible to all reproach. 
He at least gave proof of genuine repentance in the manner 
of his death. He died from horror of his own iniquity. He 
deserves therefore to be judged with more charity than is 
usually extended to him. It is the finger of Pity, not of 
anger and contempt, that should trace his epitaph. On the 
same day when Judas died the spirit of Jesus descended into 
Hades, and perhaps it is not a baseless vision of the poet 
which pictures 


‘«‘Tormented phantoms, ancient injured shades, 
Sighing began downward to drift and glide 
Toward Him, and unintelligibly healed, 
Lingered, with closing eyes and parting lips.” 


376 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Let us consider with what words the spirit of Jesus 
would greet that wailing ghost of Judas, wandering 
through the populous gloom of Hades, before we venture 
on his epitaph. 


CHAPTER XXVII 
THE LAST SUPPER AND THE ARREST OF CHRIST 


Ir was probably on the Wednesday of this week that 
Judas made his compact with the priests. This day Jesus 
spent in retirement in Bethany. Some of the long dis- 
courses reported by St. John may have been uttered on this 
day. Nothing could have been more natural than that Jesus 
should have spent this last quiet day of His life in intimate 
revelations of His own mind and spirit to His disciples. He 
had many things to say to them, and He knew that His time 
was short. In these discourses He communicates to His 
disciples the last testament of a spirit conscious of depart- 
ure. For such an act of solemn valediction there could be 
no more suitable spot than the home of Bethany, which had 
so frequently afforded Him a peaceful refuge from those 
public contentions and debates which were now concluded. 

There are several reasons to support this conclusion, the 
chief of which is that it is extremely unlikely that all the 
elaborate discourses reported in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
sixteenth chapters of St. John’s Gospel could have been de- 
livered in the brief space occupied by the Last Supper, 
which was crowded with incidents and teachings of its own. 
We may also recollect Christ’s invariable method of drawing 
His analogies direct from Nature; and not from a general 
memory of Nature, but from those particular effects which 
lay close to His hand. The exquisite discourse about the 
vine is as suggestive of immediate contact with Nature as 


those passages of the Sermon on the Mount which describe 
yh) 


878 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Let us picture 
Jesus, then, as spending this last quiet day at Bethany in 
the open air with His disciples. With the vineyards spread- 
ing round Him, now putting forth their earliest leaf, Jesus 
speaks of Himself as the Vine, and of His disciples as the 
branches, as He had long before spoken beside the Sea of 
Galilee of His words as good seed that sprung up among the 
weeds. Peace is the prevailing note of this day at Bethany. 
All the bitter feuds and controversies of Jerusalem are for- 
gotten in the deep felicity of One who has overcome the 
world, and is saying His farewell to it. 

On this Wednesday evening the Passover began. It com- 
menced with the moment when the first three stars were 
counted in the sky, and ended with the appearance of the 
same three stars on Thursday evening. It was during this 
period that Jesus made those preparations for the Passover, 
which are inimitably reported in the synoptic Gospels. He 
sent two of His disciples, identified by St. Luke as Peter and 
John, into Jerusalem to secure a room where he might cele- 
brate the feast. There can be little doubt that the proprietor 
of this room was a friend if not a disciple. It has been sug- 
gested that he was the father of Mark himself, who resided 
in Jerusalem, to whose house Peter came long afterward 
when he was delivered at midnight from his prison. How- 
ever this may be, the instant obedience of the man to the re- 
quest of Jesus proves him a sympathizer with the Galilean 
movement. In the meantime Judas, as the acting man of 
business for the little band, would have gone to the market 
to purchase a Paschal lamb for the intended supper. On 
the afternoon of Thursday the Temple was a scene of solemn 
and sad excitement. The evening sacrifice took place at 
half-past three. In the gloom of the Temple the voices of 
the Levites were heard recitmg in mournful cadence the 


DAoT SU PPERSAND ARREST 379 


pathetic regrets and confessions of the eighty-first Psalm. 
Then the great ceremonial of the Passover itself commenced. 
A long blast of silver trumpets proclaimed that the lambs 
provided for the feast were being slain. Each worshipper 
slew his own lamb, and after making the offering to the 
priests, prescribed by the Mosaic law, took the lamb away, 
that he might eat it in his own house with his relations and 
friends. While the blood of the lamb which the priests had 
publicly slain was poured into a golden bowl, the supplicat- 
ing strains of another Psalm filled the air; it was that very 
Psalm which the children had chanted in the Temple on the 
day when Jesus entered it in triumph: 


‘Save now, I beseech Thee, O Lord; 
O Lord, I beseech Thee, send now prosperity ! 
Blessed be He that cometh in the name of the Lord!” 


Amid such scenes Judas moved, with the two disciples whom 
he most detested, on that memorable afternoon. Through 
the crowded street the three men would then pass, bearing 
the slain lamb to that upper chamber where the feast would 
be consummated. A little later, in the waning afternoon, 
Jesus left Bethany, and entered the city which was to be His 
altar and His tomb. 

It must be recollected that the Paschal Supper was not a 
public but a family festival. It was also in a sense a New 
Year’s celebration. The Mosaic law ordained that the month 
of the Passover should be “the beginning of months,” and 
that the people should “take to them every man a lamb, ac- 
cording to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.” 
We cannot doubt that Jesus recollected these familiar facts, 
and they now gave peculiar significance to His action. For 
in this hour He heard the first stroke, not of a New Year, 
but of a new Era. He felt that the old was passing, giving 


380 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


place to new. And also in the act itself His relation to His 
disciples has undergone a subtle alteration. He is no longer 
the Master only; He is the Head of a family. Henceforth 
a bond more affectionate than that of friendship is to unite 
Him with them. In the act of eating the Passover together 
they have become a household, the children of a common 
birth and destiny, of whom Jesus is the Head. It is thus 
that the apostles speak of Christ as the Head, and of the 
little bands of converts as members of the family of God, 
and of the household of Faith. 

Among all the closing acts of Christ there 1s none so sug- 
gestive, and none so important, as this, because it really de- 
scribes the institution of the Church. On the eve of His de- 
parture from the world He acts in such a way as to make his 
disciples feel that henceforth they are indissolubly joined 
with Him, in a relation much more intimate and sacred than 
they had ever known before. All the words of Christ, both 
immediately before and at this Paschal Feast, reveal the 
srowth of this idea. St. Luke reports Christ as saying to 
His disciples, “ With desire I have desired to eat this Pass- 
over with you.” But why should this desire be strong in 
Him? Jesus had not celebrated the Passover with His dis- 
ciples hitherto; or, if He had, we do not know it. Perhaps 
in the course of His active ministry He had felt Himself so 
far a recusant from Jewish faith and practice that He had 
abstained from all participation in the Passover celebrations ; 
although this is unlikely when we recollect His habitual ap- 
preciation of all that was best in Judaism. But, at all events, 
He had never gathered His disciples round Him as members 
of a household bound together by the sweet solemnity of 
common sacrifice. He desires to do so now, because by such 
an act He affirms their unity with each other and with Him. 
His last discourses are expositions of this unity. He con- 


LAST SUPPER AND. ARREST d81 


ceives His disciples as no longer living separate lives, but 
erafted into Him, as the branch is grafted into the vine. 
The same idea occurs in the final prayer, immediately before 
He goes forth to Gethsemane. He prays “that they all may 
be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they 
also may be one in us—that they may be one, even as we are 
one.” ‘This is the true sentiment of the Last Supper. It ex- 
plains, and it alone adequately explains, those deeply mys- 
tical words about His blood and His flesh, round which the 
controversies of embittered centuries have raged. He is not 
content to leave behind Him admiring disciples as was Soc- 
rates. He does not conceive Himself as a mere Teacher, be- 
queathing His wisdom to the world. He wishes to bequeath 
Himself. He wishes to create an organism in which He 
shall survive, when He is far away from the world. And so 
far as outward form goes, what can be more symbolic of this 
purpose than a final scene in which He shall appear as the 
Head of a Family, whose members are as His own flesh 
and blood, loyal to Him in the intimacy of a common life, 
devoted to Him by a participation in His own nature? 

Let us follow the events of this memorable afternoon and 
evening in their order. In the late afternoon of Thursday Jesus 
and His twelve disciples come to the upper room reserved for 
them in the house of Mark’s father, and the Paschal Feast 
commences immediately on their arrival. The room in which 
they gathered was a long room, containing a divan which ran 
round three sides of it, with a table in the centre, on which 
the Paschal lamb, the bitter herbs, the unleavened cakes, and 
the cups of wine were duly set forth. We read of a conten- 
tion among the disciples as to who should be the greatest, 
and this undoubtedly refers to a dispute about the places 
which they were to occupy at the table. We have already 
seen that it was a common Jewish custom to arrange the 


382 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


suests at a feast in the order of their dignity, and the disci- 
ples manifested those petty jealousies which such a custom 
was certain to produce. If Jesus followed the usual order 
of the Paschal Supper, He would sit not at the centre of this 
horseshoe table but at one of its wings, and as each guest re- 
clined upon his left side, it would happen, as we are told, 
that the head of John lay close to his Master’s bosom. On 
the other side of Jesus was Judas. This is clear from the 
fact that Jesus hands the sop to Judas, and from the subse- 
quent conversation, which appears to have reached the ear 
of John alone. We may picture then John, Christ, and 
Judas seated at the left extremity of the horseshoe table, 
the other disciples in the order which they were left to set- 
tle among themselves, reclining round the table, and Peter 
at the extremity of the right wing, and almost opposite his 
Master. 

The Paschal ceremony commenced with the blessing of 
one of the cups of wine, which was then handed round among 
the disciples. It was customary after the wine had been 
drunk for the head of the family to rise and wash his hands, 
and this custom suggests to Jesus one of the most exquisite 
episodes of the evening. The strife as to precedence must 
have occurred at the commencement of the Supper, and it 
therefore seems probable that Jesus would take the earliest 
opportunity of rebuking a temper in His disciples which had 
so often been a source of grief to Him. Such an opportu- 
nity came now. He rises from the table, as the disciples 
suppose to fulfil the ceremonial act of the washing of hands. 
But to their surprise He returns with a towel girded round 
His loins, and a basin of water in His hands, and begins to 
wash the feet of the disciples. He would begin naturally 
with Peter, who sat at the end of the table immediately op- 
posite to Him, and Peter becomes the spokesman of the gen- 


Pode ol PPE Re AN DUAR RES T 383 


eral surprise. The washing of feet was a task usually left 
to slaves, and the towel girded round the loins of Jesus was 
the symbol of servitude. Peter feels that his Master is de- 
eraded by appearing in this capacity of a slave. All his 
generous instincts are instantly aflame, and to them is added 
a noble jealousy for the honor of his Lord. He cannot per- 
mit himself to lie at ease on the divan while his Lord stoops 
to wash his feet. He springs up, crying, “'Thou shalt never 
wash my feet.” Jesus replies with tenderness that Peter 
can have no part with Him unless he submits to the act 
which He proposes. It is in reality a new order that is 
being instituted—the Order of Humility. Christ explains 
at length what this new order means. Those common ideas 
of dignity which are the fruit of the patrician views of life 
inculecated by the Romans are at once mean and false. If 
Peter is not willing to perform the most menial act of serv- 
ice for those whom he deems his social inferiors he can 
have no part in the propaganda of Christianity. Christi- 
anity will stoop that it may conquer. It will be proud to 
wear the towel of the slave, as the Roman patrician is proud 
to wear the insignia of his superior order. Never was 
worldly pride so exquisitely rebuked; for what disciple can 
hesitate to do acts which his Master does not scruple to per- 
form? And, in an instant, Peter realizes all his Master’s 
meaning, and with characteristic ardor cries, “Lord, wash 
not my feet alone, but my hands, and my head.” 

In this brief address to His disciples there is one phrase 
which must have been heard with consternation. He says 
—perhaps when He came to Judas, and washed the feet of 
the man whose treachery was already accomplished—*« Ye 
are clean, but not all.” This ominous remark is received in 
silence ; but, as subsequent events show, it pierced the heart 
for which it was intended. From that instant Judas, in 


384 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


spite of all his effrontery, is uneasy. John is scarcely less 
uneasy. He feels what all the disciples feel, the presence of 
some hostile element at the feast. When Jesus takes His 
place at the table once more, John is filled with sad conjec- 
ture. Peter, who sits immediately opposite him at the wing 
of the table which corresponds with his own, beckons John 
to ask his Master what is the meaning of these dreadful 
words. These two disciples see distinctly what is not seen 
by the other disciples, further removed from Christ in a 
room where the dusk has now begun to gather—the gravity 
and sadness of their Master’s aspect. They hear the low- 
breathed word of Jesus, “ Verily I say unto you, one of you 
shall betray Me.” John, lying on the bosom of his Lord, 
whispers, “ Lord, who is it?” St. Matthew represents Judas 
himself as whispering, “Lord, is it 1?” and the whisper 
travels round the table, each uttering the same sentence, per- 
haps in fear, more probably in protest. There are moments 
when the bravest man doubts his courage, when the best 
man is suspicious of his virtue, and this is such a moment. 
Something lke moral panic spreads among the disciples. 
They strain forward to read the expression on the face of 
Christ, and Peter, unable to speak from the violence of his 
emotions, still beckons John with vehement gestures to get 
some categorical reply from Christ. The moment in the 
ceremony has now come when it was customary for the head 
of the family to take the sop, which consisted of a morsel of 
the Paschal lamb, a piece of unleavened bread, and some bit- 
ter herbs, and hand it to the member of the household who sat 
upon his lett hand. Judas must have occupied this place, 
and we may thus picture what ensued. John whispers his 
question into the ear of Christ, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus 
replies, also in a whisper, “He it is, to whom I shall give a 
sop, when I have dipped it.” Instantly the sop is handed to 


LAST SUPPER AND/ARREST 385 


Judas, and with a horror-struck gesture John calls Peter’s 
attention to the betrayer. It is specifically said that the 
general company of the disciples saw no special significance 
in this action. ‘They could not do so, for they had not heard 
Christ’s low-breathed word to John. Nor did Judas himself 
understand at first that Jesus had thus publicly exposed him 
as the betrayer. It would almost seem as though Jesus did 
all He could to spare the feelings of the miserable man. He 
whispers to him, “ What thou doest, do quickly.” He desires 
that Judas shall quietly withdraw and spare Him and the 
disciples the pain and profanity of a scene in an hour so sa- 
cred. And then Judas understands. He knows himself ex- 
pelled from the brotherhood ; and although his expulsion is 
accomplished with such delicacy that his fellow-disciples 
suppose Jesus has simply sent him on some errand con- 
nected with the affairs of the community, not the less a 
deadly rage burns in his heart. He rises hastily and rushes 
from the guest-chamber; and, says St. John, with one of 
those intense touches which lays bare the heart of all the 
secret tragedy of the man and of the hour, “It was night.” 
The Paschal meal now proceeded to its close, and some of 
those highly mystic sayings of Christ reported by St. John 
may have been uttered now. If it is likely that the apologue 
about the vine and the branches was spoken on the previous 
day among the vineyards of Bethany, it is almost certain 
that the immortal fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel 
was uttered now. St. John, in the order of these discourses, 
adopts the principle common to the Evangelists, and especi- 
ally noticeable in St. Luke, of combining such teachings of 
Christ as seemed mutually relevant. But the fourteenth 
chapter of St. John’s Gospel is an exquisite valediction that 
could be spoken at no time so fittingly as at the Supper it- 
self. The hearts of these men were now deeply troubled, 
25 


386 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


and it was such peaceful words that they needed as an anti- 
dote to trouble. The declaration of Jesus that He is about 
to leave them, the remonstrance of Thomas that they know 
not what His words portend, the curious request of Philip 
that He would show them the Father, the pathetic reproach 
of Christ that He had been so long with them, and yet they 
had not known Him—all these are surely parts of a conver- 
sation at the Paschal Supper. And then, in the midst of this 
conversation, a new and profoundly significant idea possesses 
the mind of Christ. The Paschal Feast ended with the 
blessing of a third cup of wine, which was passed round the 
table as the other cups had been. It is of this cup that 
Jesus now says, “Drink ye all of it, for it is My blood of 
the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission 
of sins.” And in the same instant He takes a piece of the 
unleavened bread, and blesses it, and breaks and says, 
“Take, eat, this is My body.” It was at this moment that 
the Paschal Feast truly ended, and the affecting rite of the 
Last Supper took its place. Jesus, with a single pregnant 
word, changed a national into a personal commemoration. 
His disciples were henceforth to eat bread and drink wine, 
not remembering the past of a nation whose history was 
closed, but remembering Him, in whom all nations found 
their history. The most solemn rite of Judaism*thus gave 
birth to the most solemn rite of Christianity, by means of 
which through all time men and nations were to affirm their 
allegiance to Him who had become the Head and Saviour of 
the human family by the perfect sacrifice and oblation of 
Himself. 

We need not discuss the tangled theologies of the Euchar- 
ist. The idea which was in the mind of Christ is so simple 
that the wayfaring man, though a fool, can scarcely fail to 
understand it. Let us again recollect that when Jesus held 


LaS> I SURPER ANDI ARREST 387 


the Paschal Feast with His disciples it was with the deliber- 
ate intention of constituting Himself the Head of a family. 
He wished to bind these men to Himself by some closer 
bond than mere discipleship. It is but an extension of this 
idea to conceive them as nourished by His own flesh and 
blood. The child is thus nourished on the life of the par- 
ent, and is as the parent’s self; so He, as the Head of the 
family, desires these men to be Himself reincarnated. By 
what symbol can this idea be expressed so lucidly as by 
that which Jesus used? The bread, passing into their 
bodies, and assimilated into their life, is the symbol of His 
own life, which nourishes theirs. ‘The wine, mingling in 
their blood, is the wine of hfe, drawn from His own veins, 
and poured into theirs. And, by using the simple elements 
of bread and wine as the symbol of His idea, He ensured 
that it should never be forgotten. Henceforth these men 
would never eat bread without thinking of Him, nor drink 
wine without remembering His death. He had used almost 
the same words long before, after the feeding of the multi- 
tude, when He had called Himself the Bread of Life, and 
had said, “My flesh is meat indeed; My blood is drink in- 
deed.” He had been careful then to guard His words from 
misinterpretation, by declaring that they were mystic and 
not literal: “It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profit- 
eth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are 
spirit, and they are life.” If He did not repeat the qualifica- 
tion now, it was because He deemed it unnecessary. He 
never dreamed that these men, gross as they often were in 
apprehension, could misunderstand Him to such an incred- 
ible degree as to take Him literally. And incredible it must 
still seem, did we not know of what dense stupidity the hu- 
man mind is capable, that men should deprive this last pa- 
thetic scene of all its poetry and grace, all its piety and spir- 


388 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


itual significance, by hardening it into a dogma, utterly 
repellant to the reason, and equally repellant to the delicate 
instincts of the spirit, for which seas of blood have been 
shed, and crusades of bigoted intolerance waged through so 
many generations. Remembering these things, the lover of 
his race will almost regret that Jesus ever spoke words so 
perilously beautiful; and yet, if he be also a lover of Jesus, 
he will recognize that in these words the very soul of Jesus 
exhaled its divinest perfume and breathed its tenderest mes- 
sage to the world. : 

We may now resume what appears to be the probable 
order of events. Jesus has taught the disciples the final 
lesson of humility at the beginning of the Feast, after the 
blessing of the first cup. He has deeply alarmed them by 
the distinct statement that one of them will betray Him. He 
has dismissed Judas with a word breathed into his ear, 
which but one of the disciples heard; and John and Peter 
alone have recognized Judas as the traitor. He has com- 
forted the eleven with the immortal words, “Let not your 
hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me. I 
go to prepare a place for you.” This exquisite discourse is 
closed by the solemn prayer in which Christ commends Him- 
self and His disciples to the Father: “I have glorified Thee 
on the earth; I have finished the work which Thou gayest 
Me to do. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which 
Thou gavest Me out of the world. I pray for them which 
Thou hast given Me. And all mine are Thine, and Thine are 
mine; and I am glorified in them.” The prayer is followed 
by the singing of a Psalm, which was certainly one of those 
prescribed in the ritual of the Passover. We cannot tell 
with accuracy which Psalm was chosen, but it was probably 
the one hundred and eighteenth, with its courageous words 
so appropriate to such an hour, “'The Lord is on my side: I 


PASiy so UREE RIAN DUARRES T 389 


will not fear what man can do unto me;” and its noble close, 
“O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; His mercy 
endureth forever.” If we may transpose a single sentence 
from the fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel to the 
seventeenth, we complete the unity of the whole scene. 
« Arise, let us go hence!” is the signal of departure, and 
could scarcely have been uttered before the final prayer. It 
should follow the prayer, and then, in the words of St. John, 
“When Jesus had spoken these words He went forth with 
His disciples over the brook Kedron.” 

One more episode is recorded which is full of pathos. It 
was after the hymn had been sung, and on the way to the 
Mount of Olives, that Jesus declared that all should be of- 
fended in Him that night, and that the Shepherd would be 
smitten and the sheep scattered. The words are perhaps an 
echo from the Psalm which had just been sung: “All nations 
compassed me about; they compassed me about like bees; 
Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall.” On one dis- 
ciple’s ear these words fell not so much in warning as in ac- 
cusation. Peter, who has recognized the traitor, who is filled 
with horror at his perfidy, who has armed himself with a 
sword, suspecting some midnight violence, cannot bear to 
think that his Master suspects him of disloyalty. He replies 
with generous vehemence: ‘“ Although all shall be offended, 
yet will not I.” It is intolerable that Jesus should suppose 
him such an one as Judas, and he is stung to the quick by 
the thought that Jesus can imagine ill of him. But Jesus 
knows His disciple better than he knows himself. “ Verily 
I say unto thee, that even in this night, before the cock crow, 
thou shalt deny Me thrice.” To this prophecy, so painful 
and so incredible, Peter replies with yet more vehement pro- 
testation: “If I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee 
in any wise ;” and the whole band of the disciples, attracted 


390 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


by the dispute, gather round Peter, and each lifts his hand 
and utters a vow of heroic allegiance to the death. Jesus 
does not reply again. Im painful silence the little group 
moves down the steep hill to the brook Kedron; they cross 
it, and come to the olive-garden which is called Gethsemane. 
And there, for the first time, the composure of Jesus seems 
to give way. He begins to be sore amazed and very heavy. 
With the most tender thoughtfulness He hides this sorrow 
from the disciples. He leaves them under the olive-trees 
near the gate of the garden, and Himself goes further into 
the shadow of the trees that He may pray. The disciples, 
worn out with fatigue and agitation, are soon asleep. But 
Jesus prays on, His soul now snaken with an agony which 
produces a sweat of blood. The first horror of death is upon 
Him, the first dreadful pang of dissolution is foretasted. He 
prays that if it be possible the cup may pass from Him, for 
now that death is near, through all His members there is 
mutiny, an indignant opposition of every atom of His being 
to man’s direst foe, an infinite repugnance to the tyranny of 
death. And yet the spirit triumphs over the shrinking flesh. 
The last battle is fought and won when He cries to God, 
“Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt.” From 
this moment the Divine calm of Jesus is unbroken. It is He 
who wakes the disciples who should have been His guard ; 
He who first discerns on the opposite side of the valley an 
armed band approaching; He who first declares that the 
hour has come, and the betrayer is at hand. Flight was still 
possible, but no thought of flight is in His mind. He goes 
forth to meet His enemies. He surrenders to them rather 
than is taken by them. ‘The words spoken long since are 
now visibly fulfilled: He lays down the life which no man 
could take away from Him. 

The arrest of Jesus had been planned with deadly skill 


GAS ou PPE RVANDVAKRRAST O91 


When Judas left the house of Mark he went at once to the 
priests, eager to complete his task. He probably knew from 
the conversation at the Supper that Jesus meant to go to 
Gethsemane for prayer and meditation, and no place could 
be better suited for his purpose. Perhaps it was this knowl- 
edge, as well as the knowledge that Christ had read his 
heart, which drove him so hurriedly from the table. He 
knew that this midnight visit to Gethsemane gave him a 
chance that might never come again. ‘The priests were 
equally conscious of their opportunity. It is probable that 
they at once communicated with the Roman cohort which 
was detailed for the duty of keeping public order in the 
Passover week. They may even have communicated with 
Pilate himself, representing that a dangerous revolutionary 
was abroad, whose arrest was necessary to the public safety. 
It was certainly a band of Roman soldiers who arrested 
Jesus, and this accounts for the odious act of Judas in 
betraying Him by a kiss. There was no one in the band 
sent for His arrest who knew Him, and it was necessary to 
identify Him. Judas, as he led the soldiers toward the re- 
cesses of the olive-garden, “gave them a token,” saying, 
‘“ Whomsoever I shall kiss, the same is He.” And so he 
kissed Him: not timidly, or as a formal act, but, as the word 
leads us to infer, with effusion and many times. It is in this 
moment that Judas appears truly despicable. It is in this 
moment also that Jesus appears in all the dignity of moral 
heroism. As if to show Judas how unmeaning was that kiss 
of identification, He identifies Himself; “saying, Whom seek 
ye? And they answered, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus saith 
unto them, I am He.” And then occurs the saddest episode 
in all this night of sorrow. In the very moment while Jesus 
pleads that His disciples may not be arrested with Him, 
utter panic seizes them, and they all forsake Him and flee. 


392 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


So He passes alone, but still majestic, through the moonlit 
garden, across the Kedron, and along the opposite slope to 
the house of Hanan. The work of Judas is complete, and 
He has earned his wages. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE TRIAL OF JESUS 


JESUS was taken immediately upon His arrest to the house 
of Annas, or Hanan. This circumstance alone is sufficient 
to identify Hanan as the chief mover in the plot which led to 
the overthrow of Christ. He had long thirsted for vengeance 
on the Man who had dared to attack the system of legalized 
extortion by means of which he and his family had acquired 
enormous wealth. In all probability it was he who had con- 
ducted the negotiations with Judas. His malice and his en- 
mity were now gratified. What the united Sanhedrim had 
been unable to achieve by legal means he had accomplished 
by unscrupulous stratagem. Judas was the first to inform 
him that Jesus was now safely delivered into his hands 
“without tumult.” He, in turn, informs Caiaphas, and the 
members of the Sanhedrim are hastily assembled. Thus, at 
dead of night, with no attempt to observe legal forms, the 
mock trial of the Nazarene commenced. 

But no sooner does the examination of Christ begin, than 
it is quite evident that there will be great difficulty in proving 
any serious charge against Him. Jesus is Himself fully con- 
scious of the strength of His position. When He is ques- 
tioned concerning His teachings He replies boldly that His 
teachings have been sufticiently public for all the world to 
know their import. If they desire to know what these teach- 
ings were Jerusalem can supply a thousand witnesses. The 
boldness and justice of this reply fills the priests with angry 
amazement. ‘They see the prisoner, for whose arrest they 


had so long plotted, slipping through their hands, and in 
393 


394 ELE IVCAUN (GEL RAST TSS 


their anger they permit Him to be struck upon the mouth by 
one of their own officers. They are the more angry because 
they already stand committed to Pontius Pilate. When 
Pilate placed at their disposal the Roman guard for the ar- 
rest of Christ, it was with the distinct understanding that a 
dangerous revolutionary was to be arrested, and Pilate is not 
the kind of man to accept a ridiculous position without re- 
sentment. Already they foresee those difficulties with Pilate 
which afterward occurred. Pilate will certainly demand 
some conclusive evidence of crime before he will pronounce 
a sentence of death which they are incompetent to execute. 
But what proof of guilt have they to offer? They seek 
eagerly for false witnesses, who may say something to in- 
criminate their prisoner; but to their dismay the testimony 
of each of these men proves worthless. The worst that the 
most abandoned of these bribed ruffians can say is that Jesus 
had once threatened the destruction of the Temple. At last, 
in despair, Caiaphas appeals to the prisoner Himself. He 
adjures Him by the living God to declare whether He is in 
truth the Christ, the Son of God. And from those smitten 
lips the reply rings clear and loud, “Thou hast said,” which 
was the strongest form of affirmation. With what seems to 
them insensate folly, with what seems to us deliberate ac- 
quiescence in a fate which He felt foreordained, Christ con- 
demns Himself. Once more we will see how truly the ini- 
tiative of events is from first to last in His own hands; for 
had Jesus not spoken He must have been acquitted. The 
question is at once put to the Sanhedrim, “ What think ye?” 
The answer is unanimous, “He is guilty of death.” And 
then, as if to show how little of a court of justice this tribu- 
nal was, the malice of its members breaks all bounds, and 
the hall of Caiaphas becomes a scene of insult, violence, and 


degraded rage. “Then did they spit in His face, and buffeted 








CHRIST ON THE WAY TO CALVARY 
Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) 


~% 


av 





Wie ERA le OBES US 395 


Him; and others smote Him with the palms of their hands, 
saying, Prophesy, thou Christ, who is he that smote Thee ?” 

Nothing in the history of Jesus, nothing perhaps in the 
history of the world, is so appalling as this scene in the 
house of Caiaphas. Jesus was after all the true Son of the 
Jewish Church, the Divine flower of her life, the perfect fruit 
of her teaching, and yet it was this very Church which slew 
Him. In the little Jewish synagogue at Nazareth He had 
learned all that He knew of the Hebrew Scriptures. His 
first boyish excursion had been to the Temple at Jerusalem, 
where the doctors of the law had treated Him as a prodigy. 
His teachings were full of quotations from the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures, and He often declared that He came not to destroy the 
law and the prophets, but to fulfil them. His career had 
been characterized by the utmost benevolence. In this dis- 
astrous hour, when many false witnesses came—hirelings 
and informers of the Sanhedrim, the paid creatures of Hanan 
and Caiaphas—ready to swear anything for money, it was 
impossible to prove anything to his discredit. His life had 
been lived in the honest daylight, and there was nothing hid- 
den in it of which he was afraid, no record that could leap 
to light to shame Him. The Court of Caiaphas was the su- 
preme tribunal of the national religion, and yet a glance is 
sufficient to assure us that it is not a court of justice, but a 
conclave of conspirators. Hatred, envy, and cruelty cast 
baleful shadows on every brow. It is a league of wolves 
against the Lamb. It is a hideous assembly, paralleled by 
that majestic and appalling vision of Satan and his fallen an- 
gels which the genius of Milton has made immortal; for even 
so Hanan towers amid the gloom of that disastrous night— 

4% ‘* His face 
Deep sears of thunder had intrencht, and care 
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 


Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
Waiting revenge.”’ 


396 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


And that shout of rage which filled the air when Jesus called 
Himself the Son of God tore indeed “ Hell’s conclave,” and 
“frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.” This was the 
final goal to which avarice, lust of power, and pride of ortho- 
doxy had conducted the greatest priesthood in the world, to 
whom had been committed the custody of the divinest truths. 
Upon the benches of this proud ecclesiastical assembly sat 
no longer men, but so many incarnate hatreds, thirsting and 
foaming for their prey, compared with whom the host which 
followed “the archangel ruined” appear almost as angels of 
light. That power of acute spiritual analysis, which had led 
Jesus so often to declare sitis of temper more deadly in their 
ultimate effects than the worst vices of the flesh, now stood 
justified. The clearest spiritual observers have never failed 
to recognize this truth, and thus a Dante thrusts Pride into 
the same hell with Impiety, while he is content to scorch the 
profligate in a cleansing flame through whose clouds voices 
are heard which pray not in vain to that Lamb of God who 
taketh away the sins of the world. The brutalities of big- 
otry far exceed the worst brutalities of passion; and this we 
see in that hideous movement of revenge which hurls the 
whole Sanhedrim like a pack of wolves upon a defenceless 
prisoner. 

The examination of Christ, if such it may be called, in the 
house of Caiaphas could not have taken long. John, through 
his acquaintance with Caiaphas, the exact nature of which 
we do not know, had been permitted to accompany his Mas- 
ter into the Hall of Judgment. It is astonishing to find that 
this disciple, who but a few hours earlier had lain on Jesus’ 
bosom at supper, and had received His confidences, now 
makes no attempt to shield Him from indignity, and offers 
no word of testimony on His behalf. The cowardice of 
Peter has been the text of innumerable sermons, yet the 


TOE ORTAL ORES US 397 


cowardice of John was much more despicable, because he 
must have witnessed the brutal attacks made upon his Lord. 
He who was so eager to call Judas a thief appears to have 
had no consciousness of the paltriness and infamy of his 
own behavior. Had Peter seen the blows that fell upon his 
Lord, he might have been saved from his denial, for the man 
who had already drawn a sword to defend Jesus from arrest 
would never have consented to stand dumb and helpless in 
such a scene of violence. But Peter saw none of these 
things. Probably he did not recognize the seriousness of 
the situation. He imagined that Christ would soon be ac- 
quitted, and he sat in the outer court among the servants, 
waiting for news. His strong, sanguine temperament could 
not believe that the worst was about to happen, and this is 
the explanation of his conduct. He is determined to give no 
kind of information about himself or his Master which shall 
compromise a movement which he imagines is but tempor- 
arily arrested. He acts with the blundering astuteness of a 
simple-minded man, with a kind of false sagacity which ex- 
cites pity rather than contempt. When he is accused of be- 
ing a disciple he promptly denies it. When one of the 
kinsmen of Malchus accuses him of being in the Garden 
with Christ, he denies again. When he is told that his very 
speech proves him a Galilean, he denies yet again, and this 
time with oaths and curses. And it is at this crisis that 
through the grey of dawn there is heard the crowing of a 
cock, and it is as though a bell of judgment called him to 
the court of conscience. A horror too deep for words falls 
upon the mind of Peter. It was at this moment, according 
to St. Luke, that the doors of the Judgment Hall were fiung 
back and Jesus came forth bound and bruised, and looked 
on Peter. Violent emotion overwhelmed the unhappy man, 
and he rushed away from the glance of those reproachful 


398 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


eyes, and wept bitterly. And while Peter thus wept, hotter 
tears of rage and shame flowed from the eyes of another 
miserable disciple. When Caiaphas rose from the seat of 
judgment Judas cried in horror, “I have betrayed innocent 
blood.” He had heard the mock trial of Jesus, had seen 
Him condemned and insulted, and he was terrified at the 
part which he had played. His eye also had caught the 
eye of Jesus as He went out to die, and he sank before its 
glance in abject horror. Let us not seek to mitigate the of- 
fence of Peter or of Judas in this dreadful scene; yet there 
was one disciple who behaved worse than either, upon whom 
the world has visited no censure. That disciple was the 
man whom Jesus loved, who claimed friendship with the 
priests that he might see his Lord condemned, and stood in 
shameful silence; who heard false witness uttered, and was 
tongue-tied by his cowardice; who saw cruel blows struck, 
and attempted no interference, and made no protest; who 
did and endured these things, and knew not himself a cow- 
ard, nor wept remorseful tears with Judas, nor tears of 
sacred penitence with Peter. 

It was now about seven o’clock in the morning. A pro- 
cession was formed of the priests and their followers, in the 
midst of which Jesus walked bound. The procession moved 
rapidly to the house of the Roman governor. Even now the 
priests were by no means sure of success. The conduct of 
the disciples had allayed their dread of a popular rising ; 
for if the closest friends of Jesus forsook Him in His hour 
of need, what chance was there that the multitude would 
rally to Him? But they were deeply conscious of the ille- 
gality of their proceedings, and in doubt as to what view 
Pilate might take of them. ‘They had conducted a private 
inquisition, in which all the forms of justice had been out- 
raged ; but they knew that Pilate would insist upon a public 


ee RAR OPA SUS og 


examination, at which definite evidence would be demanded. 
They also knew that the charge of blasphemy would have no 
weight with Pilate. He would treat the whole affair as a 
squabble of fanatics whom he despised, and the violent pro- 
ceedings of which they had been guilty would excite his 
scorn and offend his sense of justice. Their uneasiness is 
revealed in the first words which they exchange with the 
Roman governor. When Pilate appears in the Pretorium 
he naturally asks what accusation they have to make against 
the prisoner. They reply with the transparent evasion that 
if Jesus had not been a malefactor they would not have de- 
livered Him up to the Roman jurisdiction. The instant re- 
tort of Pilate is that if they have already found Jesus to be 
a malefactor there is no need for his jurisdiction. Let them 
take Him away and judge Him according to their law. This 
is precisely the course of action which they had foreseen as 
possible with Pilate, and it means the defeat of all their plot. 
They might convict Jesus upon the clearest evidence of blas- 
phemy, but the law which permitted them to put a_blas- 
phemer to death had long ago been in abeyance. And it 
was the death of Jesus, and nothing less, that they desired. 
With a truly diabolic craft they therefore imvented on the 
spot a new charge, of which no one had heard until that mo- 
ment. They accused Jesus of perverting the nation and of 
forbidding the people to pay tribute to Cesar. The charge 
was absolutely false, as they well knew. Within the hearing 
of some of them, and but a few days before, Jesus had pub- 
licly sustained the right of Cesar to demand tribute. It was 
moreover a peculiarly perilous charge to make, because if it 
had been true it would at once have rallied all the national 
party to Christ’s side. But it served the purpose of the mo- 
ment, which was all that they expected it to do. Pilate 
could not show himself indifferent to a charge of treason; he 


400 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


dared not summarily dismiss a prisoner against whom such 
a charge was made. He at once entered into the Judgment 
Hall, and ordered Jesus to be sent to him, that he might 
publicly examine Him. 

The character of Pilate deserves close consideration and 
attention. We are at once conscious of a total change of at- 
mosphere when we pass from the house of Caiaphas to the 
Pretorium of Pilate. Instead of raving priests smiting Jesus 
from the very judgment-seat with brutal blows, we have a 
calm and astute man of the world, the servant of a nation 
whose supreme watchword was Order. By contrast with 
Caiaphas and Hanan, Pilate is almost a splendid figure. He 
is, at least, impressive by virtue of a certain masculine dig- 
nity and restraint. Any one familiar with the faces of the 
Roman emperors may easily picture Pilate, for the type of 
face was common. We recognize at once in the square jaw, 
the firm mouth, the harsh brows, the soldier accustomed to 
the exercise of authority, and utterly relentless in the use of 
it. As Pilate understood the business of life, the chief duty 
of man was to render unquestioning obedience to might 
rather than to right. For him questions of abstract right 
and wrong were not worth the breath spent upon them. The 
world was a place of practical aims and energies, in which 
the strong man alone succeeded. Not in any bad or corrupt 
sense, but nevertheless in a very real and true sense, Pilate 
was of the earth, earthy, and represented the spirit of a 
practical and brilliant worldliness. 

Such a man would naturally feel a strong aversion to 
all questions of religion; and yet this is remarkable when 
we recollect that at this time among the most intelligent of 
his countrymen there was a profound curiosity about these 
very questions. At this same hour there was alive in Rome 
one of the greatest of philosophers, Seneca, who could say 


ioe PRAT ORM ESUS 401 


of himself that “his mind revelled in the spectacle of that 
which is divine, and, mindful of its own eternity, passed into 
all that hath been, and all that shall be, throughout all ages.” 
Behind all the hard practicality of the Roman mind there 
had always throbbed a soul in search of God, and later on 
an Epictetus could counsel his countrymen “to wish to win 
the suffrages of your own inward approval, to wish to appear 
beautiful before God;” and a Marcus Aurelius could write 
of the divinity in man and define the true end of life as “a 
pious disposition and social acts.” We can imagine with 
what interest and sympathy Seneca would have conversed 
with Christ; but Pilate was no Seneca, and cared as little 
for the speculations of the Roman thinker as he did for the 
vexed theologies of the Jewish priests. With all that was 
finest and noblest in the Gentile mind, its search for God 
and its efforts to unlock the secrets of eternity, he had no 
sympathy ; and still less would he be able to discover any 
point of intellectual contact with the mind of Christ. Placed 
as governor over a strange and fascinating people, whose re- 
ligion was the loftiest in the world, and had its root ina 
remote antiquity, there is nothing to show that he had even 
taken the slightest pains to understand it. It is clear that 
he had never heard the name of Jesus till the day when He 
stood before him as a prisoner. If the legend be true that 
Procla, his wife, was a student of the Jewish Scriptures, he 
would regard her strange taste as a piece of harmless ped- 
antry. As for him, he read no books: they were the amuse- 
ment of the idle. He prided himself upon being a practical 
man of affairs, who had more important matters to engross 
his mind. He regarded the Temple and all its sacred rites 
much as a contemptuous English resident might regard the 
temple of a gorgeous superstition beside the Ganges. Ina 
word, he had no interest in religion, no desire for truth, no 
26 


402 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


curiosity about religious phenomena. He was Pilate, hard 
pressed by the government of a refractory province, anxious 
to raise his taxes without tumult, sedulous of keeping his 
peace with the Emperor, and careful for nothing but his own 
power, his own interest, his own advancement in life. And 
it was this man, realist and materialist in all his thoughts 
and conduct, who was now to judge One in whose Divine 
idealism the world of all the future spoke. 

Some sympathy is due to a man placed in a situation so 
difficult, and it must be conceded that Pilate makes an honest 
effort to understand his prisoner, and to act justly toward 
Him. He goes at once to the root of the matter, and asks 
Jesus if He really claims to be the King of the Jews; for it 
would seem that in the hasty charge of treason invented by 
the priests it had been alleged that He had received homage 
as a King. Here, and here alone, a fragment of real evidence 
was introduced, for it was incontestable that Christ had en- 
tered Jerusalem but a week before amid general acclamation 
as a King; and Pilate at once fixes upon this fact as incrim- 
inating. Jesus replies with another question: “Sayest thou 
this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of Me?” Pilate re- 
torts with contempt that he is nota Jew. He desires a plain 
answer to a plain question: “ What hast Thou done?” The 
very form of the question indicates his hesitation to receive 
as evidence the angry accusations of the priests. But the 
reply of Jesus only increases his perplexity. Jesus avows 
Himself a King, but not of this world. To this end was He 
born, and for this cause had He come into the world, that 
He might bear witness to the truth. “What is truth?” asks 
Pilate; not in jest, as Bacon would persuade us, but in real 
perplexity. The words of Jesus seem to him ingenious 
trifling, and yet he feels that they cover something that lies 
beyond the penetration of his worldly sagacity. The con- 


rE SERINE ORTH S US 403 


viction rapidly forms itself in his mind that this is no dan- 
gerous revolutionist, but a poor, distraught enthusiast. How 
can he order the crucifixion for sedition of One whose mind 
is absolutely destitute of political ideas? What has Rome 
to fear from this amiable dreamer, with His delusion of im- 
aginary kingdoms? Pilate begins to be angry. He is sus- 
picious that the priests desire to make a jest of his judgment, 
and to cover him with ridicule. He goes out to the Sanhe- 
drists and says brusquely, “I find no fault at all in Him.” 
The words can have but one meaning: they are a complete 
acquittal. 

But Pilate had not reckoned with the rapid growth of the 
agitation among the people. <A multitude now fills the open 
courtyard, and Pilate has good reason to know how rapidly 
a storm may rise among a people so fanatical. For the first 
time he recognizes with dismay the peril of the situation, 
and it is at this point that his temper changes. No man 
knew his duty better: having publicly acquitted Christ, he 
should have released Him instantly. But the weakness of 
Pilate’s character, as it was the weakness of the later Roman 
policy itself, was a love of expediency. In the decay of Em- 
pire diplomacy usually takes the place of that straightforward 
honesty, staking all upon the die, by which Empire is at first 
established. The soldier in Pilate is now hindered by the 
diplomat. A hundred men-at-arms might easily have swept 
the rabble from the Pretorium; but Pilate knows well that 
such a display of force would be duly reported to the Em- 
peror as an outrage and a massacre, with every kind of ex- 
agegeration which malice could invent or falsehood support. 
From that moment the interests of Christ, which are the 
interests of justice, become of less importance to him than 
his own interests. He looks upon the howling mob with an 
indecision in his eye which they are quick to mark. They 


404 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


become “the more fierce,” shouting insult and accusation, 
and in the tumult of words Pilate at last distinguishes one 
word which appears to offer him political salvation. “He 
has stirred up all the people, beginning from Galilee to this 
place,” cry the priests. The complete ignorance of Pilate of 
all Christ's previous history is manifested in the question 
which he now asks, “Is Jesus, then, a Galilean?” When 
the priests affirm, with that scorn which never failed them 
when they mentioned Galilee, that Jesus is in truth a Gali- 
lean, Pilate sees his way. If He be a Galilean, he is in 
Herod’s jurisdiction, and to Herod let Him go. Herod is in 
Jerusalem, and the Idumean_ will better understand than he 
the complications of a charge which appears in the main ec- 
clesiastical rather than civil or political. So once more 
Jesus is delivered up to the priests, and now, guarded prob- 
ably by Roman soldiers from the violence of His own coun- 
trymen, He is taken to the palace of Herod. 

One would fain draw the veil over the scene which ensued, 
for human nature itself suffers degradation in it. Ifwe may 
feel sympathy with Pilate we can feel none with Herod. 
Herod receives Jesus with offensive suavity. He has long 
desired to see Him, and his attitude is one of base and cruel 
curiosity. Jesus has no significance for him except as a re- 
puted thaumaturgus. He overwhelms Him with fluent chat- 
ter; asks Him many questions; and even expects Him to 
work some act of necromancy for the amusement of his court. 
He supposes that Pilate has sent him a superior sort of jug- 
gler, and he is so grateful for the friendly intentions of the 
Roman governor that that day a long standing quarrel be- 
tween them is healed. But Jesus marked His understand- 
ing of the man by a complete majestic silence. He, like 
another martyr, who knew his trial a mockery, “lifted up his 
face, without any speaking.” It was a dreadful silence; it 


TB RA ep SW b> 405 


erew and spread like a cold sea. It is all the more signifi- 
cant when we compare the scene which had occurred in the 
High Priest’s house, and at the tribunal of Pilate. Jesus 
was not silent in the presence of the priests: to them He 
spoke boldly of His life, His claims, His hopes. He was 
not silent before Pilate; He felt so much of pity, perhaps 
even of respect, for the troubled Governor, who was at least 
anxious to act justly, and save Him from His foes, that He 
explained to him more fully than to any other what He 
meant by His kingship and His Kingdom. But to this man, 
sentimentalist in religion, sensualist in life, utterly base and 
rotten to the core, Jesus answers not a word. He knew that 
He stood in the presence of the murderer of John, and He 
knew that with such a man all sincere appreciation of religion 
was impossible. He knew that it was farcical to expect jus- 
tice from him. And so Christ is silent—an indignant silence, 
a terrible and freezing silence; dumbness surcharged with 
anger, rebuke, reproach beyond all capacity of words, more 
thrilling than the cry of trumpets, more awe-inspiring than 
the crash of ruined firmaments. And at last, even Herod 
becomes conscious of what that impenetrable silence means. 
A scorn, as cruel as his previous curiosity, takes possession 
of his thoughts. Lips are thrust out, and bright eyes gleam 
with malice as they catch the eye of Herod. He will not 
even take the trouble to condemn One so forlorn and impo- 
tent. And yet in his scorn there is a kind of terror which 
goon finds expression in acts of an unpardonable brutality. 
He knows too well that those calm and dreadful eyes read 
the secret of his levity, his insincerity, his concealed abhor- 
rence of all things virtuous and pure. The moment he finds 
how impossible it is to befool Jesus, how yet more impossi- 
ble to break down His dignity, the real Herod stands re- 
vealed ; “then Herod and his men of war set Him at nought 


406 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


and mocked Him, and arrayed Him in a gorgeous robe, and 
sent Him again to Pilate.” 

Once more Jesus stands before Pilate. The stratagem of 
sending Him to Herod, from which Pilate hoped so much, 
has failed. Pilate, in seeking to evade responsibility, has 
made his position a thousand-fold more difficult. Even now 
he might have saved the situation by prompt military action; 
but he is less disposed than ever to attempt decisive meas- 
ures. He begins to realize that he has made the mob his 
master; yet he still imagines that he car circumvent its mal- 
ice by a superior astuteness. He confronts the mob with a 
firmness he is far from feeling, and again repeats the reasons 
why he has acquitted Christ. “Ye have brought unto me,” 
he says, “this Man, as One that perverted the people; and 
behold I, having examined Him before you, have found no 
fault in this Man, touching these things whereof ye accuse 
Him: no, nor yet Herod; for I sent you to him, and lo, 
nothing worthy of death is done unto Him. I will therefore 
chastise Him and release Him.” The words produce an ef- 
fect exactly opposite to that which Pilate had intended. The 
priests at once interpret them as a confession of surrender, 
and not without reason, for if Pilate really thought his pris- 
oner innocent, it was both absurd and unjust to chastise Him. 
This proposed chastisement is plainly a concession to the 
mob, and he who can concede so much can be forced to con- 
cede more. ‘Thrice Pilate repeats his offer, only to find him- 
self treated on each occasion with increasing derision. He 
commits the fatal error of arguing with the mob, asking 
them, as if they were the judges, “Why, what evil hath He 
done?” Even the Roman guard, which lined the courtyard, 
must have pitied Pilate in that moment, and have asked, 
with wondering scorn, why the master of many legions 
should hesitate to use the sword in defence equally of justice 


~~ slab RIAL. OPWESUS 407 


and his own dignity. In his extreme perplexity one more 
expedient suggests itself to Pilate. It is customary at the 
Passover to release some notorious prisoner, and Jesus may 
be released on this ground. He makes this proposition to 
the mob, as a happy solution of all the difficulty. But again 
he has miscalculated. It would seem that a certain political 
offender, perhaps a leader of popular revolt, with the singu- 
lar name of Jesus Bar-abbas, then lay under sentence of 
death in the Roman prison. Perhaps the proposition to re- 
lease Jesus as a Passover prisoner suggested the release of 
this other Jesus, for until that moment his name had not 
been uttered, nor had the custom of releasing a Passover 
prisoner been alluded to. However this may be, it is clear 
that some one suggested the release of Jesus Bar-abbas, and 
in a moment the idea is taken up by the whole multitude. 
Jesus Bar-abbas instantly achieved a popularity, at which no 
one would have been so much surprised as himself. With 
one voice the multitude cries, “Release unto us not this Man, 
but Bar-abbas”; not the Jesus of Galilee, whose kingdom is 
not of this world, but this other Jesus, who better compre- 
hends the means by which kingdoms are created. 

In all this singular controversy the priests have had the 
upper hand, and at every turn Pilate has found himself out- 
argued, out-manceuvred, and humiliated. He now retires 
again into the inner Hall of Judgment, and it is there that 
he receives a warning of the dreadful crime, now imminent, 
which his weakness will achieve, as though heaven itself had 
vouchsafed direction to him in his perplexities. He is no 
sooner set down upon the judgment-seat than his wife con- 
veys to him a message, which sends a shiver of superstition 
through his laboring mind. “Have nothing to do with this 
just Man,” she says, “for I have suffered many things this 
day in a dream because of Him.” Perhaps she, in the early 


408 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


dawn when Christ was first brought bound into the Judg- 
ment Hall, had found means to look upon His face; perhaps 
she, a reputed student of the Hebrew Scriptures, knew some- 
thing of His career and claims; and in that interval, when 
Jesus had been sent to Herod, she had slept, and had dreamed 
dreams which were full of horror, from which she awoke with 
a strong presentiment of peril for her husband in his contact 
with One so holy and so awful. Pilate would receive her 
message with a troubled brow. A faith in dreams and omens 
was almost a part of a Roman’s education, and the greatest 
soldiers had not been free from the superstitious awe which 
they inspired. Yet what could he do? And, as he thinks, 
some faint memory of a striking Jewish custom, of which 
perhaps his wife had once informed him, recurs to his weary 
mind. According to the Mosaic law, when a man was found 
slain the people of the nearest city were called upon to dis- 
avow the murder; and this they did by slaying an heifer, 
and washing their hands over it, and saying, “Our hands 
have not shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be 
merciful, O Lord, and lay not innocent blood unto Thy peo- 
ple of Israel’s charge.” Once more Pilate thinks he sees a 
way through the intricacies of the problems which beset him. 
He also will wash his hands before the people, and thus 
avow himself innocent of the blood which they are resolved 
to shed. He will thus obey the warning of his wife’s dream, 
for he will have nothing to do with this just Man. He will 
thrust the whole responsibility of the judicial murder, which 
he now regards as inevitable, upon the priests and the mob. 
But he finds it hard to believe that his diplomacy has failed, 
He will make yet one more attempt to save a prisoner whom 
he greatly prefers to release, if release be possible. He ap- 
pears once more before the multitude, and renews his offer 
to release Jesus as a Passover prisoner. But in the brief in- 


PAE PRA OD MERSUS 409 


terval, while he has been absent, the priests have strained 
every nerve to influence the people in favor of Jesus Bar- 
abbas. With a tumultuous and appalling unanimity they 
now demand the prisoner for sedition, and when Pilate, 
weakly arguing with them, asks, “What shall I do then with 
Jesus, which is called Christ?” they reply with one accord, 
“Tet Him be crucified.” And then Pilate solemnly performs 
the most dramatic act of this tragic and momentous morning. 
“When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather 
a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands be- 
fore the multitude, saying, ‘I am innocent of the blood of 
this just person; see ye to it. Then answered all the peo- 
ple and said, ‘His blood be on us, and on our children.’ ” 
All the wisdom of Pilate seemed that day to be turned to 
folly, and so it was to the end. He had washed his hands 
before the people, and yet his own conscience was not at 
ease, nor was the crowd satisfied. He had calculated that 
the people would be impressed by the spectacle of a Roman 
judge making use of a solemn Jewish rite, to declare his dis- 
avowal of a crime which they seemed resolved to commit ; 
but they treat it as little better than a vain theatrical display. 
In his despair he recurs to his former policy. He has been 
weak too long; at last he will be strong. He will scourge 
Jesus and let Him go. Whether the crowd likes it or not 
this shall be the sole punishment of Jesus, for crucify Him 
he will not. The soldiers, weary of a scene which has been 
throughout an insult to their arms, aching to strike some 
blow, they care not on whom or for what cause, rush eagerly 
upon the task of scourging Jesus. They are in no mind to 
make distinctions; Jesus is a Jew, and they hate all things 
Jewish. And so, let us hope not with the connivance of 
Pilate, they not only scourge Him, but mock Him. They 
plait a crown of thorns and put it on His head in derision 


410 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of His kingship; they put a reed into His hand for sceptre, 
and they cover the wounds which they have made with a 
purple toga. It was so that Jesus was presented to the peo- 
ple when the scourging was accomplished. Surely this was 
enough, thought Pilate; even the most vindictive crowd can 
demand no more. So sure is Pilate of his position that he 
now can dare to mock the priests, before whom he has 
quailed for so long. He tells them to take Christ away and 
crucify Him, well knowing that they have no legal power to 
do so. The priests retort with a new charge against Christ, 
the third they had made that day, and the last. They de- 
clare that He had made Himself the Son of God, and Pilate, 
remembering his wife’s dream, is now shaken with a great 
terror. He makes yet one more attempt to interrogate his 
prisoner, but now Christ answers nothing. “Speakest Thou 
not unto me? Knowest Thou not that I have power to cru- 
cify Thee, and I have power to release Thee?” asks Pilate 
in insulted dignity. Never was vainer boast, for events had 
shown that Pilate’s prerogative of life or death could not be 
enforced against the will of a hostile mob. With gentle 
irony, with sublime pity and magnanimity, Christ conveys 
this truth to Pilate by replying, “Thou couldest have no 
power at all against Me except it were given thee from above : 
therefore, he that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater 
sin.” Pilate himself thrills with the magnanimity of that 
reply. The Man crowned with thorns, whom he has permitted 
not only to be scourged, but to be basely mocked, can pity him, 
can even seek to find extenuation for his crime. More than ever 
Pilate desires His release, for he has not alone a wrong to 
his own conscience which cries for reparation, but a wrong 
done to Christ. But it is now too late. The ominous cry 
begins to rise, “If thou let this Man go thou art not Cesar’s 
friend. Whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against 


VE MOREA On TESUS Ali 


Cesar.” And before that threat Pilate’s courage finally col- 
lapses. He dare not risk accusation to Cesar for the sake 
of Christ. He is once more the man of the world, with 
whom self-interest is supreme. Jesus must die that Pilate’s 
reputation may be saved. He hastily, and with words of 
mockery which cover his own shame, gives the brief order 
that Jesus shall be crucified. Jesus submits in perfect si. 
lence; had He spoken, surely His last word to Pilate would 
have been, “ What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole 
world and lose his own soul?” 

Thus ended the trial of Jesus Christ. It was from first to 
last a travesty of justice. Not one of the charges urged 
against Him was proved. He had been thrice declared ab- 
solutely innocent by the man who finally condemns Him. In 
the course of the trial we see Him brought into close con- 
tact with the entire priestly hierarchy, with a King, and with 
a military Governor who represents all the might of Rome. 
He is superior to all. They each in turn serve as foils to 
throw into relief His dignity and purity. His fortitude and 
courage, His self-restraint and magnanimity, are conspicuous 
throughout. No one can mistake the fact that He goes to 
His death in perfect innocence. As little can we fail to see 
that He goes triumphantly ; the victim indeed, but to the 
last the Victor- Victim, 


CHAPTER XXIX 
THE DEATH OF JESUS 


THE priests and the Jewish mob had themselves demanded 
the crucifixion of Jesus. Had they been capable of the least 
reflection they would have understood the insult which they 
affixed upon the whole Jewish nation by the demand ; for 
crucifixion was a form of death reserved only for the most 
servile. It was not strictly a Roman form of punishment at 
all, and in her purer and prouder days Rome would have 
disdained to employ a means of death so gratuitously brutal. 
Rome had borrowed it from the East, probably from the 
Phoenicians, the most corrupt and cruel of all the races who 
have raised themselves to empire. She reserved it for the 
Kast, as if to affirm her undying contempt for peoples whom 
she regarded as unworthy of any reverence. The Cross was 
thus the symbol of national shame and degradation. No 
Roman, however vile, was crucified. It was a death so cruel 
in itself, so dishonoring and shameful, that Rome reserved it 
for those whom she regarded as the vermin of the human 
race, who were too obnoxious to claim the privilege of part- 
nership in her social order. But on this disastrous day it 
seemed as if the whole Jewish race were bent on national 
suicide. In order to compass the death of Jesus the priests 
had openly avowed that they had no king but Cesar. Pa- 
triotism itself had perished in the paroxysm of rage against 
a person. The ideas for which the nation had fought and 
strugeled with a splendid obstinacy through so many years 


of subjugation, were in a moment thrown away. And it is 
412 


TRE DBA OP ESUS 413 


the same kind of madness which we discern in the demand 
for the crucifixion of Jesus. It matters nothing to the peo- 
ple that the Cross is the symbol of national degradation, and 
that for a Jew, however guilty, to die by such a death, is an 
insult to the whole nation; it is the death which they them- 
selves demanded for their noblest Son. That they may the 
more effectually dishonor Jesus they are willing to dishonor 
the entire race; nor can they see, in this madness of revenge 
that it is not Jesus only, but the nation itself, that is put to 
an open shame. 

It was about nine o'clock in the morning when the final 
order was given for the execution of Jesus. The place of 
execution is minutely described to us as Golgotha, or the 
place of a skull, a small hill near the city, and immediately 
beyond its gates. There is but one place discoverable in 
modern Jerusalem which entirely fulfils the descriptions of 
the Evangelists. It is a green hill, with a precipitous lime- 
stone cliff, which bears an unmistakable likeness to a human 
skull. It is at a point where great roads converge, open and 
public, so that it would be possible for a great concourse of 
people to assemble, each of whom would be able to see all 
that occurred upon the hill itself, and to read the inscription 
which Pilate wrote above the Cross. The hill rises immedi- 
ately outside the Damascus Gate, which in earlier times was 
called the Gate of Stephen, because tradition asserts that the 
first martyr suffered death in its immediate vicinity. ‘To this 
day the hill is known among the Jews as the Hill of Execu- 
tion, and it is said that he who passes it breathes to himself 
the strange words, “ Cursed be He who destroyed our nation 
by aspiring to be its king.” At the foot of the hill is a gar- 
den, in which a rock sepulchre has lately been discovered, 
certainly dating from the days of Herod, and almost certainly 
the tomb in which the body of Jesus lay. 


414 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


It was to this hill that the sad procession now passed. 
First of all marched the centurion charged with the execu- 
tion of the sentence, who bore aloft the tablet on which the 
offence of Jesus was described, “ This 1s Jesus, the King of 
the Jews.” Next followed the soldiers, carrying the instru- 
ments of execution, and behind them came Jesus Himself 
bearing the Cross. ‘Two other prisoners doomed to the same 
death accompanied Him: a refinement of derision on the 
part of Pilate, addressed to the Jews rather than to Jesus, 
whom he wished to insult not only by the inscription on the 
tablet, but by making their King the companion of thieves in 
His death. The whole multitude followed behind, conspicu- 
ous among whom were some of the friends of Jesus, and 
many women who wept aloud, and smote their breasts, after 
the custom of mourners at a Jewish funeral. Immediately 
outside the Damascus Gate, the procession halted, for Jesus 
was now at the ascent of the hill, and could no longer bear 
the Cross. A man coming in from the country, known as 
Simon of Cyrene, was hastily impressed for this duty by the 
Roman soldiers, who had too great a scorn of the Cross to 
offer the Sufferer the least help in sustaining it. The plateau 
of the hill was soon reached. The Sufferer was then bound 
upon the Cross, which was raised, and fastened into the 
cavity prepared for it. Heavy nails were driven through the 
hands and feet of Jesus, and the horrible torture of the cru- 
cifixion began. 

The peculiar feature of death by crucifixion was its igno- 
miny. It was a form of death with which it was impossible 
to associate the least idea of dignity; its associations were 
altogether sordid and depraved. The fact that a man dies 
by public execution may be painful to remember, but it is 
not necessarily dishonorable or shameful. Socrates was 
executed, but it was under circumstances which did not make 


is «& -_ 





EccE HoMo 
Luis De Morales (1509-1586) 





Tie DTA TORS TE SUS 415 


personal dignity impossible. Many martyrs have died upon 
the scaffold and at the stake; but while men may have been 
disgusted at the barbarity of the means of death employed, 
none have felt them to be inherently shameful. The common 
form of Jewish execution was by stoning ; but barbarous as 
this death was, yet it was so little shameful that there had 
been those who still were heroes in Jewish memory in spite 
of the nature of their death. But crucifixion involved a kind 
of shame beyond shame: indelible, odious, and utterly re- 
volting. Among civilized nations who allow the penalty of 
death for capital offences, it is generally agreed that the 
means of death employed should be swift. Justice is con- 
tent with the fact of death, and does not demand torture. 
But in crucifixion the pangs of dissolution were prolonged 
and public. It was no unusual thing for a criminal to hang 
upon his cross for several days, expiring at last from sheer 
exhaustion. The modesty of death itself was violated in this 
prolonged public exhibition of a dreadful agony. Exposed 
to a pitiless sun, racked with a furious thirst, often derided 
by the passers-by, liable to the attacks of vultures while yet 
consciousness survived—it was so that men died upon the 
Cross, under every aggravation of atrocity. It was little 
wonder, therefore, that the Cross was regarded with a pecul- 
iar abhorrence. It was the symbol of an infamy so complete 
that even pity was alienated: of a dishonor so dire that the 
mind refused its contemplation. 

The truly astonishing thing in the death of Jesus is that 
by the manner of His dying He utterly destroyed these evil 
associations of the Cross, and replaced them with ideas of 
inexhaustible beauty and significance. He died with a dig- 
nity which triumphed absolutely over the indignity of the 
Cross. The gibbet of the slave lost its shame from the mo- 
ment Christ was nailed upon it. That which had been loath- 


416 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


some became honorable, that which had been hated became 
reverenced and loved. We could the better understand this 
apotheosis of the Cross if it had been slow; but the marvel- 
lous thing is that it was immediate. Those who themselves 
saw the Cross on Golgotha with sickening horror and reyul- 
sion, lived to boast of the instrument of death which they 
abhorred. Instead of speaking with bated breath of this 
dreadful ignominy inflicted upon One whom they loved, the 
Apostles called attention to it, and sought to fix the eyes of 
the world upon it. St. Paul made the Cross his boast; he 
preached not only Christ to the Gentiles, but Christ crucified. 
He did so with the full knowledge that the Cross was an of- 
fence, and a stumbling-block to the Gentiles, who counted 
him a fool in such glorying. No man was readier than he 
to take the line of the least resistance in his effort to conquer 
the Gentile mind; but in this instance he deliberately chal- 
lenged its utmost prejudice. How can we account for this 
extraordinary attitude of thought? How can we account for 
the strange success which it achieved? What explanation 
can we give of this total reversal of prolonged tradition, 
which turned infamy to glory, and clothed the gibbet of the 
slave with an imperishable sanctity and splendor? The only 
possible reply is that Jesus changed every association of the 
Cross by the way in which He died upon it. Such Divine 
erace and dignity revealed themselves that day on Golgotha, 
that henceforth the Cross of Christ became the central fact 
of human history, and being thus lifted up, Christ drew all 
men unto Himself. 

Every act of Jesus in these last hours is significant. That 
majestic deliberation, which we have remarked in all the 
closing acts of His life, did not fail Him now. He has 
passed from insult to insult, ever confronted with the tortur- 
ing facts of human baseness; He has seen Himself betrayed, 


THE DEATH OF JESUS 417 


denied, and forsaken by those who had once loved Him; He 
has been in turn the victim of the envy of the priests, the 
mockery of Herod, and the weakness of Pilate; He is ex- 
hausted not only by these wounds made in His heart, but by 
lack of food, and a long night of physical and mental agony ; 
yet He is never so much a conqueror as on the way to Gol- 
gotha. To the women who bewail Him, and smite upon 
their breasts, He has one sternly tender word: “ Weep not 
for Me, but for yourselves, and for your children, O ye 
daughters of Jerusalem!” When there is offered to Him, 
by these very women, who were members of a charitable as- 
sociation whose work it was to soothe the pains of the dy- 
ing, a cup of strong wine mingled with myrrh, He refuses it, 
because He knows that it is meant to deaden His conscious- 
ness under the approaching agony. He will meet death 
clear-eyed, and with complete self-possession. He has acted 
throughout as One who surrenders life, because the work of 
life is finished, and so He will act to the last. No plea for 
mercy has escaped Him; no merciful mitigation of His pain 
can be accepted now; heroic to the last, He will meet death 
with an unflinching will. We may say perhaps that it was 
with this refusal of an anodyne that the transformation of 
the Cross began. Pity changed to awe when men beheld 
not only the calmness, but the aspect of resolution with 
which Christ faced His end. His words, uttered from the 
Cross itself, deepened this impression. ‘The Roman soldiers, 
accustomed to the frantic curses of those whom they cruci- 
fied, heard with startled ears the quiet voice which prayed, 
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 
He had already triumphed long before the end came. Be- 
fore the eyes of all who watched Him, save those deadly en- 
emies whom no knowledge could enlighten, the Cross slowly 
changed to an altar; infamy became idyllic; shame was 
27 


418 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


turned to glory. When, in the end of the day, the Roman 
centurion himself exclaimed, “Truly this was the Son of 
God,” he did but sum up a series of impressions which were 
destined to create the same astonishment and faith in the 
whole world, as the story of the death of Christ became more 
widely known. 

In the meantime the enemies of Christ were far from 
happy. Nothing is so bitter to a persecutor as to see his 
victim elude him after all, by those nobler qualities of nature 
of which he cannot be deprived. They became more and 
more conscious of the effects of His dignity upon the multi- 
tude. Perhaps they regretted the publicity of the death they 
had themselves designed, when they saw the opportunity it 
afforded for the revelation of Christ’s inmost character. It 
is quite certain that they were also uneasy on other grounds. 
The tablet which had been carried before Jesus to the place 
of execution was now nailed upon the Cross. An immense 
concourse had assembled between Golgotha and the Damas- 
cus Gate, and each read with astonishment the words, “THIS 
Is JESUS, THE KING oF THE JEWs.” It was an insult to the 
entire nation, and was bitterly resented. And it was impos- 
sible to foresee what form this resentment might take. Had 
the multitude really believed that the true Messiah was being 
crucified by the act of the Romans, there is little doubt that 
a rescue would have been attempted. The Roman soldiers 
at the Cross were few, and would have been unable to resist 
the mob. In frantic consternation the Sanhedrists now 
rushed to Pilate, and implored him to change the form of 
the words to “He said, I am the King of the Jews.” But 
Pilate, glad of an opportunity of insulting safely men from 
whom he had already endured such great humiliations, re- 
plies curtly, “What I have written, I have written.” He is 
indifferent to any threat of rescue; perhaps in his heart he 


WET A EE Ova EBS US 419 


would have welcomed it. The baffled priests can think of 
no better device to lessen the effect of the title which is writ- 
ten on the Cross than to mock Jesus. Yet even their mock- 
ery is the fruit of fear. “He saved others, Himself He can- 
not save,” they cry; but even while they speak some think 
that they hear Jesus crying for Elijah to come and save Him, 
and there is a general expectation of some miracle of strange 
deliverance. So little does crime believe in itself, so little is 
injustice confident or content in its achievements! But to 
Jesus, let us hope, these bitter insults were inaudible; the 
last agony had already commenced. Between Him and them 
the silence of the tomb was already beginning to interpose, 
and all the voices of the earth sounded dim, and vague, and 
unintelligible. 

Yet not all voices. Beside Him hung a man who suffered 
the pangs of the same death without the same consolations. 
This man now begins to speak in broken accents to the dy- 
ing Lord, and his words seem to imply that he was not 
wholly unacquainted with the history of Jesus. It may be 
that already he had heard the words of One who was the 
Friend of publicans and sinners. Beside the Sea of Galilee, 
within the streets of Jerusalem, or far away on the coast of 
Tyre and Sidon, he had stood on the fringe of some great 
multitude, and had heard strange words about a Kingdom, 
which he did not understand and soon forgot. But the face 
of Christ he did not forget, nor the tender pleading of His 
voice ; and now, by a strange irony of destiny, he finds him- 
self hanging beside One whose voice had already stirred 
strange chords in his miserable heart. He perceives clearly 
that some unjust fate has overtaken Jesus. He does not for 
an instant think of Him as a comrade in guilt. He himself 
suffers duly the reward of his deeds, but Jesus can have 
done nothing amiss. What the Kingdom is that Jesus spoke 


420 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


about on that half-forgotten day: what is the meaning of 
that strange writing placed above His head, he does not 
know; but he conceives a sudden passion to be always 
where Jesus is. He is afraid of death, and he would cling 
to One for whom death seems to have no terror. He is 
sinking into the great darkness, and he would steady him- 
self upon the hand of One stronger than himself. So the 
man prays his simple, ignorant, pathetic prayer, “ Lord, re- 
member me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom.” And 
Jesus replies, “To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.” 
With this solitary trophy of His grace, like a flower placed 
in the hand of the dead, Jesus will enter the dark abysses of 
the under-world. And He, who came not to call the right- 
eous, but sinners to repentance, is content that it should be so. 

Yet again, before the end, the voice of Jesus is heard in 
definite command. St. John tells us that he and the mother 
of Jesus stood near the Cross, and the probability that His 
mother would be near Him at the last, and, if there at all, 
would be in the company of some disciple, is so great that 
we need attach little weight to the fact that the Synoptics 
omit the circumstance. Joseph was long since dead, and 
Mary had long regarded Jesus as the head of her humble 
household. Perhaps she had found little comfort in the 
other members of her family, who were openly hostile to 
Jesus. She was now about to be left doubly alone in the 
world. On her, even more than on her Son, fell the full 
horror of the Cross. Who indeed henceforth would care to 
associate with this broken-hearted woman whose Son had 
died the death of a slave, and to whom could she turn for 
consolation? Jesus now completes that lesson of spiritual 
relationships, as the only real relationships, which Mary had 
once found so hard to understand. His mother and His 


brethren were those who did His will, He had then said; 


Die DBA HVOr TRSUS 421 


and they who forsook all to follow Him would not fail to 
find mothers, and brethren, and sisters, who were theirs by 
a tenderer tie than the bond of birth and blood. So it was 
to be through all time; spiritual affinity was to supply the 
place of blood relationships, to supersede them, to create a 
finer ecstasy of love, and by the novel force of these affini- 
ties the Church was to grow into existence. And so Jesus, 
not only with a natural thoughtfulness for one whose life 
was left unto her desolate, but with a profound vision of the 
new society which would spring up from His teachings, now 
turns to His mother, and says, “Woman, behold thy son” ; 
and to John he says, “Behold thy mother.” And in that 
hour all the offence of John was pardoned. Jesus obliter- 
ated the memory of the Hall of Caiaphas when He gave His 
mother to the custody of John. 

These scenes could only have occurred in the early stages 
of the crucifixion, when the power of thought and conscious- 
ness was complete. Slowly deep clouds began to gather in 
the soul of Jesus as the supreme moment of dissolution drew 
near; and, as if Nature herself sympathized with the tragic 
hour, at the same time a great darkness began to gather over 
the whole land. We might interpret this darkness as sym- 
bolic only—the subjective emotion of Christ cast into ob- 
jective form—did not the whole narrative support the state- 
ment that a real physical phenomenon occurred. Darkness 
frequently precedes an earthquake in the East. In such 
hours it is as though the course of Nature were arrested; an 
appalling silence reigns; the world seems to cower before 
some impending blow; and ever higher moves a bastion of 
blackest cloud, till the sun is blotted out and day is over- 
whelmed in untimely night. Such a dreadful night now fell 
upon Jerusalem, and in a yet deeper gloom the soul of Jesus 
groped its unfriended way. Broken words fell from Him. 


422 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Once He cried that He thirsted, and a Roman soldier, no 
longer capable of mockery, hastened to offer Him a sponge 
soaked with rough country wine. His mind turned instine- 
tively to those Scriptures of His nation which had so long 
been the stay and inspiration of His thought. Passages of 
the twenty-second Psalm came to His lips: “My God, my 
God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Why art Thou so far 


from helping Me? . . . JI ama reproach of men, and 
despised of the people. . . . All they that see Me laugh 
Me to scorn . . . they shoot out the lip, they shake the 


head, saying, He trusted on the Lord that He would deliver 
Him; let Him deliver Him; seeing He delighted in Him.” 
So in the darkness the solemn recitation went on, above the 
heads of the terrified soldiers and the quailing crowd. Some 
thought He was delirious with thirst, and again a soldier 
offered Him drink; others that He cried on Elijah to deliver 
Him. There was as yet no sign of imminent death. The 
voice that cried through the gloom was clear and strong. 
Suddenly there was a change, wholly astonishing to his ex- 
ecutioners. A great and terrible cry rang from the Sufferer’s 
lips. Some who listened heard Him say, “Father, into Thy 
hands I commend My spirit.” Others heard Him say, “It 
is finished!” In the same moment the first vibration of the 
earthquake shook the hill. The crowd ran hither and thither, 
terrified and maddened by the dreadful darkness. They saw 
with horror the graves in the adjoining burial-ground shat- 
tered and wrenched apart. From Jerusalem itself rose ter- 
rible cries of panic, and a rumor spread that the Temple it- 
self was riven by the earthquake. Golgotha was deserted, 
save by the Roman guard, who dared not leave their post. 
When at last the darkness lifted, they came nearer to the 
Cross, determined to break the legs of the dying men and 
make an end of a scene which had now become eyen to their 


“i 


THE DBA THOR TESUS 423 


hardened nerves unbearable. They then saw that Jesus was 
dead. It was as though the world itself had become the 
darkened bier of the dead God; and so the centurion felt it 
when he cried, “This is the Son of God.” 

Jesus died of a broken heart. The terrifying cry which 
all had heard marked the moment of a fatal rupture of the 
heart. When a Roman soldier thrust his lance into the side 
of the dead Christ it pierced the lung and then the pericar- 
dium, and from the wound flowed blood and water. John 
alone witnessed the phenomenon. It made so deep an im- 
pression on his mind that in extreme old age he spoke of 
Christ as One who “came by water and blood; not by water 
only, but by water and blood.” John saw something sym- 
bolic in this phenomenon; the modern reader sees rather a 
dreadful witness to the agony which Christ endured. From 
the moment when the Last Supper ended no food had passed 
the lips of Christ, and every moment had been crowded with 
intolerable agony. The physical pain which He endured 
was but part of this accumulated torture; in His betrayal, in 
the outrages heaped upon Him by the priests, in the tremen- 
dous storm of execration which broke upon Him from every 
side, in the horror of this exhibition of the diabolism of hu- 
man nature, in His sense of the weight of all human sin 
which pressed upon Him, in His desertion not only by man 
but by God, wave after wave of agony swept over Him, until 
the torn and wounded heart could endure no more. He suc- 
cumbed not to physical injuries, but to the violence of His 
own emotions. And in this was the proof that God had not 
deserted Him. By what seems almost a miracle to the Ro- 
man soldiers His sufferings were mysteriously abridged. 
Six brief hours of suffering had brought that sweet release 
of death which in ordinary crucifixions came only after many 
hours, and even many days. 


424 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


Terror still reigned in Jerusalem. Under ordinary circum- 
stances few things can be so appalling as the long, sickening 
heaye of the earth when the seismic wave passes through it, 
and the ghastly darkness added to the general terror. A 
sense of national guilt now linked these phenomena with the 
death of Jesus. It was as though God Himself smote the 
city for its wickedness. The darkness seemed the symbol of 
the face of God withdrawn. The earthquake worked its 
direst havoc in the Temple buildings themselves. We are 
told that in the instant when Christ expired the veil of the 
Temple, a heavy curtain covering the Holy of MHolies, 
which could only be moved by the united strength of many 
priests, was rent in twain. Josephus and other contempo- 
rary writers have recorded the fact that about this time the 
Temple gates rolled back of themselves, and the middle and 
chief light in the Golden Candlestick was extinguished. It 
is more than probable that this is a direct reference to the 
earthquake which wrought such alarming devastation in the 
‘Temple on the day when Jesus died. In such a moment the 
priests would not forget the words of Him whom they had 
slain: that the day would come when not one stone of the 
Temple would be left upon another. Already, it would seem 
to them, the death of Jesus was avenged. They had feared 
Him living; they feared Him yet more in the moment of His 
death. 

In the ordinary course of things the dead Body would 
have been left upon the Cross until the vultures had destroyed 
it; but this last indignity was not to be. Perhaps the priests 
were anxious to remove at once the dreadful witness of their 
crime; it is at least certain that they raised no objection to 
the burial of Jesus. One of the secret followers of Jesus, 
Joseph of Arimathea, together with Nicodemus, at once went 
to Pilate, and obtained permission to remove the Body. The 


Tat DRA TOR ESS 425 


Garden at the foot of Golgotha belonged to Joseph, and in 
the limestone cliff at the north of the Garden he had already 
built for himself a sepulchral chamber. To this chamber the 
Body was borne. Nicodemus had brought with him myrrh 
and aloes, with which the Body was anointed; it was then 
wrapped in linen grave-clothes and laid in the Tomb. It 
was now evening, and the next day was the Sabbath. Haste 
characterized all the actions of the friends of Jesus. The 
embalmment itself was hasty, for the evident intention was to 
complete it when the Sabbath was past. Amid the evening 
lhght—for the darkness had now passed—the women who 
had loved Christ best stood dissolved in tears and watched 
the last sad and sacred rites. The stone which ran in a 
groove before the open doorway of the vault was then rolled 
into its place. At the same moment a band of soldiers ar- 
rived, with instructions to seal the stone and to keep guard 
over the sepulchre, lest the Body should be desecrated or re- 
moved. The friends of Jesus then left the Garden, and the 
silence of the night fell upon the scene. 

Thus Jesus died; young, beloved, adored, yet rejected and 
despised by all but a few of His own countrymen. The de- 
feat of the Galilean movement seemed complete. The most 
that His friends could hope was that His memory, sanctified 
by death, would haunt a few minds for a few years, like a 
sacred dream. It would then slowly fade away, as the 
memory of the dead must fade, however well-beloved, and at 
last dissolve. Here and there, for some brief years, a man 
or woman would speak of Him with tenderness, would recall 
His aspect or His words, but the life of the great strenuous 
world would roll on, and at last obliterate all traces of His 
name. He had passed like a bright apparition on the dusty 
roads of life, and had gone never to return. All the hopes 
He had encouraged seemed falsified and empty. Of all the 


426 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


happy throngs whom He had gathered to His side, no single 
man was found capable of leadership, with a spirit or a 
genius to continue His work, nor was there the least sign of 
any rallying force in the movement which He had begun. 
He was one of those whose names are “writ in water,’ one 
more of that sad company who win affection by their very 
failure, which perhaps they would not have won by conspicu- 
ous success. At His graye Regret might sit, mourning hopes 
denied, visions unfulfilled, purposes unaccomplished. His 
very death was such as to destroy all faith in human pro- 
gress. Once more iniquity had triumphed over righteousness, 
and wickedness had trampled on the pure and good. Long 
years would pass before another dared attempt the task in 
which He failed; for such a story was deterrent to enthusi- 
asm, such a death affirmed the folly of expecting too much 
from average human nature. These were the thoughts of 
the friends of Jesus on this fateful night. It was for them 
a night of despair and grief that knew no remedy. Among 
the enemies of Jesus more sombre thoughts prevailed, in 
which victorious malice was predominant. Never again 
would they hear that voice whose calm authority rebuked 
their sins. Hanan slept satisfied with his success: Pilate 
had already turned his mind away from a series of events 
which he remembered with disgust. Already Jesus was for- 
gotten, and the world which He had sought to force into a 
loftier groove still kept its ancient course of fraud and folly, 
wrong and crime, and so would continue to the end, when 
the human race itself would cease through mere weariness of 
life and disgust at its futility. And so it might have been 
if the life of Jesus had really ended at the Cross. But in 
the silence of that awful night Divine forces were at work in 
the Tomb where Jesus slept. The Night had closed upon 
the world indeed; but there was a Morning close at hand. 


EEDA iy Or [ES US 427 


And with that morning there would come for Christ and for 
the world “another era, when it shall be light, and man will 
awaken from his lofty dreams and find—his dreams still 
there, and that nothing is gone save his sleep.” 


CHAPTER XXX 
THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 


BerorE the Resurrection of Jesus can be at all discussed 
we must be assured that He was really dead. <A popular 
theory of the earlier rationalism was that Christ swooned 
upon the Cross; that the simulation of death was so com- 
plete that it deceived everybody; and that in this state of 
swoon or trance He was laid in the Tomb, where after three 
days He revived and awoke. Thetheory haslong since been 
discarded because its inherent difficulties are insuperable. 
It is incredible that the Roman soldiers, accustomed to pub- 
lic executions, should have acknowledged for dead One who 
was not dead; that Joseph of Arimathea, in his sacred task 
of anointing the wounded Body, should have had no suspi- 
cion that the death was not real; that the priests should not 
have assured themselves that He whom they laid in the 
guarded sepulchre was quite beyond their malice; that in 
fact all these persons, including Pilate himself, should have 
connived at a mock burial, or have acquiesced in it through 
ignorance. ‘The soldiers were certainly astonished that Jesus 
had expired so soon, but they made the fact of death doubly 
sure by the lance-thrust which penetrated the lung and the 
pericardium. The priests were suspicious that the Body 
might be stolen, and they were uneasy at the rumor that 
Christ had said that He would rise again; but they never 
doubted that He was really dead. ‘The disciples, in their 
utter grief and dismay, bore witness to the same conviction. 


On the night when the Holy Corpse was taken from the 
| 428 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 429 


Cross and laid in the tomb of Joseph, there was not a single 
person who was not fully assured that Jesus of Nazareth was 
dead. 

This fact, which we may accept as historic and indubita- 
ble, has an important bearing on the condition of mind which 
characterized the disciples. If we could assure ourselves 
that they had any reason, however ill-grounded, to sup- 
pose that the death of Christ was an illusion, we might 
argue that the idea of resurrection arose from this illusion, 
and that they brought themselves to see that which they de- 
sired to see. The visions of Christ which they afterward 
believed they saw might then be attributed to a predisposi- 
tion of mind, subjective emotion producing what passed for - 
objective phenomena. We may admit at once that such a © 
theory has a certain plausibility. In the moment which fol- 
lows the decease of some beloved person the sense of his 
presence as still near the mourner is often overwhelming. 
The accents of the familiar voice still linger in the porches of 
the ear, the magnetism of his presence still sends waves of 
vibration through the heart. We have to ask ourselves, how- 
ever, whether such sensations are not the fruit of some vague 
or intense belief in something immortal in man; whether our 
nerves would quiver with the sense of the ghostly nearness 
of the dead, unless we had accustomed ourselves to think of 
the spiritual life of man as separable from his physical or- 
ganism. In other words, we must first of all assert immor- 
tality and spiritual existence of the dead before we imagine 
them as near us. Men who hold no such creed, and regard 
death as finality and annihilation, are not disturbed by such 
tender fancies. 

Were the disciples predisposed to such a belief? There 
is everything to prove the exact contrary. Jesus had often 
spoken to them of His death and resurrection, but they had 


430 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


regarded neither as possible. They perhaps believed and 
hoped that He who had wrought so many miracles would 
certainly redeem Himself from the Cross; but in the hour 
when Jesus died, all hope died in them. They were no 
longer a united band; the confraternity was broken up. 
Dismay reigned supreme, and they were in despair. They 
went to their own homes, nor was there any one disciple 
capable of offering the least encouragement to the scattered 
flock. For a long time they had been lifted beyond them- 
selves, and beyond traditional Jewish ideas, by the superior 
idealism of Jesus; but with His death they sank at once to 
the level of ordinary Jewish thought. And in ordinary Jew- 
ish thought, it must be recollected, the idea of a spiritual 
personality in man which survives death scarcely so much as 
existed. The spirit returned to God who gave it, and was 
reabsorbed in Him. Death was the last refuge, the house 
of sleep, where the wicked ceased from troubling and the 
weary were at rest. Man, in the end of his days, laid him- 
self down with the dust of vanquished generations, and was 
no more seen. ‘The idea of resurrection, openly derided by 
the Sadducees, was held with extreme vagueness even by the 
most pious minds of the nation. So, then, we may conclude 
that there was nothing to predispose the disciples to any 
faith in Christ’s Resurrection. They believed His soul at 
rest with God, far from the care and strife of earth, which 
He would nevermore revisit. They were incapable of creat- 
ing the vision of the Risen Christ, and when at last that 
Vision swam before their eyes, they doubted the witness of 
their senses, and regarded it with terror and misgiving. 

It was late on Friday evening when the final disposition 
of the corpse was made in Joseph’s Tomb, and the Roman 
guard arrived to begin the tedious duties of their night 
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THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 4831 


guard around the Tomb was evident. If by any means the 
Body of Jesus were removed, and secreted by the disciples, 
it would be easy to create a legend that, like Elijah, He had 
ascended into heaven in a chariot of fire, and His prophetic 
claims would be resuscitated. But the disciples were far too 
broken-spirited either to invent or to accomplish a plot so 
daring. The night passed, and no one came near the Tomb. 
The next day was the Sabbath, and again complete silence 
reigned in the Garden. The soldiers passed the day as 
they could ; jesting, it may be, with ribald satire at the folly 
of the Jews, and of Pilate, in setting them a task so foolish, 
or perhaps gambling sullenly on a rough-drawn checker, 
such as may still be seen incised in the Pavement, or Gab- 
batha, outside Pilate’s house. The night of the Sabbath 
came at last, and they fell asleep, wearied with the tedium 
of an empty day. Toward morning a renewed shock of 
earthquake ran through the Garden, and they woke in terror, 
to discover that the massive stone at the entrance to the 
Tomb was displaced. They rushed at once into the city, 
full of alarm at an event so unexpected, and fearful of the 
consequences to themselves. Not one of them appears to 
have looked into the sepulchre, nor suspected it was empty. 
The first person to enter the Garden was Mary Magda- 
lene, and close behind her followed certain other women, 
bent upon a common task—the complete embalmment of 
their dead Master. They knew that the Tomb was closed 
with a massive stone, and they had speculated sadly, as they 
drew near, how they, with their feeble strength, could roll 
away the stone. There still remains in Jerusalem, at what 
is called the Tomb of the Kings, one of these stones intact. 
It resembles a millstone, and was rolled in a deep groove to 
its place before the low entrance to the Tomb. It was yet 
dark when Mary entered the Garden, and to her intense sur- 


432 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


prise she saw that the stone was either rolled back in its 
groove, or lay shattered before the now open entrance to the 
sepulchre. Mary’s immediate thought was that the Body of 
Jesus had been stolen. Startled, and trembling with a great 
fear, she turned and ran at once to find John and Peter. 
She met the two disciples not far from the Garden, and told 
them that the Body of Jesus had been taken away. The 
two disciples, equally alarmed, at once began to run toward 
the Garden, and found, as they supposed, a_ spoliated 
sepulchre. 

In order to comprehend what next occurred we must have 
before us an exact picture-of the Tomb itself. Let us pic- 
ture, then, a smooth limestone rock, like a wall, at the end 
of the Garden, in which was hewn a low doorway leading to 
the three cavities prepared for the reception of the dead. It 
is specifically said that up to this moment neither John nor 
Peter knew the Scripture that Christ must rise again from 
the dead; that is to say, the idea of a resurrection had not 
occurred to them. The first impression on the mind of John 
was that the Body was still there. Standing in the low 
doorway of the sepulchre, in the dim light, he saw the gleam 
of something white in the loculus where the Body of Jesus 
had been laid, and he naturally supposed that the Body was 
undisturbed. But Peter, less reverent and more daring, now 
entered the sepulchral vault itself, and saw something more 
than John had seen. “He seeth the linen clothes lying, and 
the napkin that was about His head, not lying with the linen 
clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” The im- 
pression created by these words is that Jesus had quietly 
awakened out of sleep and had disappeared ; but it will be 
seen at once that this would have supplied no proof of a 
resurrection, but rather the reverse. If this was all that 
Peter had seen, he might have believed that Jesus had in- 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 423 


deed swooned upon the Cross, and had been buried while in 
a trance, from which He had awakened in the moment when 
the earthquake had displaced the stone before the door, and 
had then stepped forth into the grey dawn, to be seen no 
more of men. Or he might even have believed that Jesus, 
thus wonderfully released from the Tomb, was at that mo- 
ment in Jerusalem, and with what winged feet would he have 
left the Garden to seek his wronged and liberated Lord! Or, 
again, there was nothing in the spectacle of these grave- 
clothes lying in their places to suggest even that Jesus was 
alive at all. The Body might merely have been removed, 
and if, as was probable, it had been removed by the reverent 
hands of Joseph or of Nicodemus, the grave-clothes would 
have been replaced. But what Peter saw was something 
wholly different. He saw the grave-clothes lying fold for 
fold, as though the Body still reposed beneath them; he saw 
the white turban in the hollowed niche at the end of the 
stone loculus, as if the head of Jesus still rested there, and 
he was instantly aware that nothing in the Tomb had been 
disturbed. Everything appeared as if the Body were still 
there, and yet the body was gone. Etherealized and spiritu- 
alized, that Divine Body, now free from the limitations of 
physical law, had passed through-its cerements, had floated 
upward, light as air, had become a form celestial. It was 
that discovery which overwhelmed the mind of Peter. With 
a silent, awe-struck gesture he called John to look, and John 
followed him into the vault. The same astounding inference 
seized upon the mind of John. Fold for fold the grave- 
clothes lay, precisely as they had been left on that bitter 
Friday evening when the corpse of Jesus had been laid to 
rest within the loculus, yet the Body was not there. No 
hand had touched the Tomb. No sleeper had awakened in 
horror and dismay to rush forth into the reassuring light 
28 


j 


434 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


of day. Spirit-free and clothed with immortality, Jesus 
had passed through all material obstructions, and was alive 
in His new celestial nature. Then these two disciples saw 
and believed. 

This was the moment when the truth of a Resurrection 
was born, and yet, it will be observed, at present it was only 
a sublime inference, beset by many doubts and difficulties. 
No one had seen the Risen Jesus; all that was certain was 
that He was not in the Tomb. Peter and John at once left 
the Garden in an ecstasy of hope. They left behind them 
one watcher, who was destined to supply the first positive 
affirmation of their hopes. ~'This woman was Mary Magda- 
lene. 

It does not appear that the two disciples communicated 
their thoughts to Mary, or indeed held any conversation with 
her. Perhaps they hardly noticed her. In the sudden 
shock of wonder and of joy which they experienced they 
were aS men in a dream. ‘They could hardly believe their 
own belief. An awe-struck silence lay upon their lips. 
Mary, bowed in bitter weeping, scarcely observed their de- 
parture. Had the two disciples informed Mary of their 
astounding discovery, and of the inference which they drew 
from it, there would be some ground for the suggestion that 
Mary was now prepared to see what she afterward affirmed 
she saw. <A highly imaginative woman, already assured that 
a miracle had occurred, might have persuaded herself that a 
further miracle did occur. There are many instances in hu- 
man history of persons who have persuaded themselves that 
they have seen what they expected to see, and their credulity 
scarcely offends us because it is allied with truly pious emo- 
tions, and is quite unconscious of deliberate fraud. But the 
narrative is conclusive in its evidence that Mary had at this 
moment no suspicion of the truth which had already pos- 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 435 


sessed the minds of John and Peter. She had given but 
one hasty, terrified glance at the Tomb. It was empty, and 
her sole thought was that the Body of Jesus had been stolen. 
She sat at some little distance from the doorway of the vault, 
weeping bitterly. It was dreadful for her to think that the 
Tomb had been profaned: Was Jesus to find no rest even 
in death? Who knew what even now might be happening 
to the sacred Body over which she had shed such tears of 
passionate lamentation? Jewish law ordained that the body 
of a criminal should be buried in a place of infamy, and it 
seemed but too likely that the tireless enemies of Jesus had 
robbed the Tomb that they might heap this further degrada- 
tion on the dead. Ah, if she could but find the Body, she 
herself would rescue it from insult. She would bear it away 
to some place of safe interment; she would guard it as Riz- 
pah guarded her dead sons, and God would doubtless give 
her strength for an enterprise so sacred. These were the 
thoughts of Mary. So far was she from even hoping to see 
Jesus alive once more, that in her heart she was designing a 
fresh interment of the Lord she loved, where He could sleep 
in peace, safe from all His enemies. 

The gust of new-born morning shook the trees, and passed 
like a long sigh across the Garden, and Mary looked up. 
The light was now growing clear, and a sunbeam lay across 
the doorway of the Tomb. It seemed to her as though two 
shining angels sat in the vault, and a soft whisper floated to 
her, “Woman, why weepest thou?” She reples with the 
thought which lies so heavy on her heart: “They have taken 
away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him.” 
Tn the same instant a light footstep, drawing nearer through 
the dewy silence of the Garden, arrests her ear. One stands 
beside her whom she takes to be the gardener, and He re- 
peats the question, “Woman, why weepest thou? Whom 


436 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


seekest thou?” She scarcely lifts her head to answer for a 
second time a question so full of torture. Shaken with sobs, 
she makes her agonized reply, “Sir, if thou have borne Him 
hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take 
Him away.” ‘The woman who made this appeal was surely 
not one whose mind was capable of creating in an instant the 
phantasm of a Risen Christ, “a resuscitated God.” Itisa 
cry of poignant grief, of courageous despair. The figure at 
her side utters one word—“Mary!” It is uttered with a 
well-remembered accent which recalls Galilee, Jesus, ended 
madness, passionate love, a thousand hopes and fears, the 
beautiful and tragic history-of a lifetime! One word leaps 
to her lips, one word alone is possible, uttered in overwhelmed 
and rapturous surprise, “Rabboni, Master!” For one brief 
moment she has not been able to reconcile the tumult of her 
thoughts: her mind trembles on its balance, as if the old 
madness had returned, but in a strange delirium of joy. The 
Image that lives in her mind, to the exclusion of all other 
images, is of Jesus on the Cross, pallid, blood-smeared, 
dreadful, disfigured out of all knowledge by the hand of 
Tragedy, which has buffeted and bruised Him. This Jesus 
was not the Jesus she had seen on Calvary; it is another 
Jesus, yet the same, Whom she had seen in Magdala, with 
all the morning shining in His eyes! It is the Jesus of 
Galilee and the lakeside, the Jesus of the lilies and the open 
fields, standing in the silent dawn with perhaps the gathered 
lilies in His hands, fresh, young, smiling, the Jesus of the 
Garden, whom she had mistaken for the gardener. Words 
no longer have significance for her; in dumb ecstasy she 
falls upon her knees, and stretches out her hands to touch 
the sacred feet. She hears as one beyond hearing, suddenly 
translated into a strange new world where silence is as 
speech, the Divine murmur of a voice above her, saying, 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 487 


“Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father; 
but go to My brethren and say unto them, I ascend unto My 
Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” 
The vision lingers for an instant longer, but Mary dares not 
look on it again. Mysterious hope and healing flow into her | 
wounded heart, leaving it enraptured. She rises from her 
knees with the glad cry upon her lips: “I have seen the 
Lord, and He has spoken with me,’ and she hastens from 
the Garden that she may pour her story into the ears of 
John and Peter. Henceforth the Garden les deserted. 
Nevermore shall He be seen among its flowers; vainly shall 
the groups of awe-struck friends gather round its gates and 
watch for some faint glimpse of Him whom Mary saw. 
But on its fragrant air the message lingers—“ He is not here: 
He is risen” ; and in the hour when Mary found her God, the 
world found its redemption and its faith. 

Mary was not believed. Even Peter and John would feel 
that it was one thing to believe that Christ had mysteriously 
vanished from the Tomb, and quite another to represent Him 
as still visible to human eyes, still capable of communicating 
His wishes and His love to human hearts. Perhaps they 
felt some jealousy, too, that, if such a vision were vouchsafed 
at all, it had not been vouchsafed to them. Into these feel- 
ings we need not enter, but the general incredulity among 
the disciples is a very striking feature in the narrative. A 
very plausible assumption, often put forward as an explana- 
tion of the Resurrection, is that from the moment when 
Mary’s story gained currency there would be an irresistible 
tendency to supplement it with other and similar stories. 
Kach man who had loved Jesus would at once begin to imag- 
ine that he had seen Him. The whole band of the disciples 
would be “on the watch for new visions, which could not fail 
to appear.” A strange sound, a shadow, a gust of wind, al- 


488 = THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


most anything would be enough to suggest to an excited 
fancy that Jesus had addressed them, or had for an instant 
glided near them. But the entire body of evidence is against 
these suppositions. The disciples complied against their 
will in a belief in the Resurrection, rather than connived in 
it. They sat with closed doors, anxious and fearful, and 
when, in the twilight of the same day, the form of Jesus 
floated into the room, and His voice addressed them, they 
were “terrified and affrighted.” Two disciples, who on the 
same day were upon the road to Emmaus, talked of nothing 
as they went but the tragic death of Jesus, and received a 
vision of Him as they sat, at supper with intense surprise. 
One of the Apostles himself, Thomas, called Didymus, openly 
expressed his incredulity. There was, therefore, as we might 
expect, the greatest division of opinion among the friends of 
Jesus. We are even told that forty days later, when the vis- 
ions had become numerous, and Jesus had openly appeared 
to many disciples at once, “some doubted.” The vision of 
Mary, as the first and most beautiful of many reported vis- 
ions, no doubt exercised a wide influence on the minds of the 
disciples; but it excited quite as much hostility as credence. 
To say that the “delicate susceptibility” of Mary—or, in 
coarser language, “the passion of one possessed ”’—created 
the Divine shadow which hovers still above the world, is to 
speak with a total disregard of facts. It is significant 
that St. Paul, who studied the whole story with the keen 
analysis of a man in whom hostility slowly melted into faith, 
does not so much as mention Mary Magdalene. Let us 
honor her as the one who first received the revelation; but 
it is foolish to say that Christendom owes its faith to the ex- 
quisite poetic fancy of a loving and hysteric woman. The 
world is not so easily deceived. Conviction in such a case 
could only come by a long series of cumulative proofs, in 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 439 


which every link was tested, every statement questioned ; and 
this spirit of criticism, by which men doubt their doubts 
away, this rational incredulity which is the only guarantee 
of truth, certainly existed from the first amongst those who 
were the chief actors in the drama. When John included 
Mary’s story in his Gospel, it was, in a sense, a reversal of 
his previous opinions; an acknowledgment of a truth which 
he had once denied, and had accepted only with reluctance 
and after sober judgment. 

The sacred idyll grew apace. One incontestable fact was 
clear to all—the Body of Christ had finally disappeared. 
Had it indeed been stolen by either friend or foe it was im- 
possible that the fact could have been long concealed. The 
foes of Jesus had the strongest reasons for discovering what 
had really happened. Men like Joseph and Nicodemus had 
reasons hardly less urgent. It became evident to all that a 
myth was growing up that staggered human reason. This 
myth could have been shattered in an instant had a single 
person come forward to reveal where the body was secreted. 
No one revealed the secret, because there was no secret to 
reveal. Day by day suspicion melted into faith and adora- 
tion. The last Apostle to be convinced was Thomas. Eight 
days after the first rumor of a Resurrection was bruited 
abroad, this disciple, hitherto incredulous, saw his Lord 
under circumstances which left no room for denial. In the 
interval he had doubtless applied all the ingenuity of a mind 
radically sceptical to the solution, or rather the dissolution, 
of those beliefs among his friends, which appeared to him 
tainted with the virus of insanity. In the dimness of the 
Garden, amid the half-lights of dawn, a luminous shadow 
had appeared, which bore a resemblance to Jesus ; upon the 
road to Emmaus, in the gathering night, a Stranger, bearing 
the same extraordinary resemblance, had spoken with a voice 


440 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


that seemed like Christ’s. Not upon such accidents as these 
would Thomas base his faith. He would be content with no 
gentle phantom, outlined for a moment on the air, in soft 
lines of light. On the eighth night there appeared to 
Thomas, as he sat in the upper room with the disciples, not 
a phantom, but the very Man Christ Jesus. He saw the 
wound-marks in the hands, and feet, and side. He heard 
the remembered voice speak to him in words of tenderest af- 
fection and reproach. The soul of Thomas breathed all its 
faith and love in one ecstatic cry, “My Lord, and my God!” 
From that hour the perfect fellowship of the Apostles was 
established. Eleven men, each convinced in his own way of 
a truth which made a mock of reason and experience, were 
to go forth into a hostile world to preach what seemed an in- 
credible delusion; and, what is more amazing, to win the 
world to their beliefs. 

Among these disciples a unanimous desire to return to 
Galilee was soon expressed. It would, perhaps, have been 
more natural had they shown a disposition to linger in the 
scenes, now made intensely dear and sacred, where their 
faith had been so miraculously new-born. It is not enough 
to say that this sudden exodus to Galilee was caused by the 
hatred which they felt for that city where Jesus had endured 
such hideous wrongs and insults. No doubt such a motive 
existed, and was operative, and to it was added the fear of 
the Sanhedrim. But a far more potent motive was the con- 
ception they had now attained of what the risen life of Jesus 
meant. They did not imagine Him as a Divine Phantom 
still hovering round the Tomb. Such an imagination would 
have presented no extraordinary features, for it is common 
in the poetry and the folk-lore of the world. But these men 
imagined Christ as having taken up again for a little time 
the active duties of human existence. He is no ghost; He 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 441 


has come to them in His own proper personality and iden- 
tity. He has been known to them in the breaking of bread, 
in the old wise kindliness and tranquillity of temper, in the 
use of familiar metaphors and forms of speech, and also in 
the perfect knowledge He displays of their past history, their 
hopes and their adventures, their secret thoughts and doubts. 
Even physically He is unchanged. He bears upon His per- 
son the scars of Calvary, calls attention to them, and invites 
Thomas to thrust His hand into His side. Some transfigur- 
ing change has passed over Him, but He eats and drinks 
and acts as though He were still one of themselves; as 
though He had but been away upon a brief journey; 
as though He had quietly resumed life at that point where 
its threads had been dropped; as though, indeed, the visible 
dissolution on the Cross, the anointing and the burial, were 
but episodes, quite unreal, and long since left behind. He 
is “the same Jesus”; and yet different in this, that for Him 
the physical limitations of life are utterly dissolved. 

It was because they thus thought of Christ that they felt 
no inclination to linger at His tomb, nor did they ever return 
to it. They went into Galilee because it seemed to them 
that the scenes where the earthly ministry of Jesus had com- 
menced were the scenes in which His wider spiritual ministry 
should also be inaugurated. Besides this, they believed that 
Jesus Himself had appointed Galilee as the sacred trysting- 
place of love and faith. He desired to meet the men He 
most loved among the scenes He most loved. Beside the 
lake where they had first received their call they were to ex- 
perience a new dedication to their work, and where their 
loyalty had first been kindled they were to take the vows of 
a& more assured allegiance. And so it was. There came a 
morning when no fewer than seven of the disciples found 
themselves upon the Sea of Galilee. They were returning 


449 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


from a night of fruitless toil, and as the day broke they saw 
upon the shore a well-remembered Figure, standing by a 
newly-kindled fire. The boat was now close to shore, and 
the Figure was discerned by all of them. Once before on 
that very lake Jesus had entered into Simon’s boat, and had 
given him certain instructions which resulted in a great 
catch of fish. Something of the same kind happened now. 
The Stranger told the tired and disappointed fishermen to 
cast the net on the right side of the ship, and they immedi- 
ately found themselves struggling with a great draught of 
fish, which they secured with difficulty. Memory in Peter 
suddenly became insight. With a startled cry, “It is the 
Lord!” he flung himself overboard and swam to land. 
When the other disciples had arrived they were gravely wel- 
comed. The Stranger took bread and gave them; and now 
the memory of all was thrilled. Even so had Jesus acted 
at the Paschal Supper. That was the Supper of Death, this 
was the Breakfast of New Life. The night of sorrow was 
closing round them then; but now the morning bathed the 
lake, and the day of hope had opened. They dared not 
speak for awe and joy; even Thomas, who was with them, 
had no question which he dared to ask. They waited for 
the Giver of the feast to speak, and when the meal was over 
Jesus spoke. Peter, who had thrice denied, was gently 
drawn into a three-fold utterance of his love. He heard no 
more with fear the solemn prophecy of the things he should 
endure for Christ. The baptism of death which he had once 
refused was now restored to him, and he knew himself for- 
given. The conversation was prolonged. The seven men 
had the closest opportunity of studying Christ attentively. If 
any doubt yet lingered in their minds: if in the brevity of 
the previous appearances of Christ there was room for some 
suspicion of self-deception; there could be none now. For 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 443 


some hours they sat with Him they loved upon the shores 
of Galilee, heard His voice, ate and drank with Him as in 
the old sweet days of human fellowship, and were assured 
that His triumph over death was absolute and supreme. 
The sacred idyll which was destined to renew the world now 
received its final touch. The lake which had seen the open- 
ing of His early ministry saw its close; and on the spot 
where His Gospel was first preached the Divine miracle of 
His risen and eternal life was finally affirmed. These things 
happened “that men might believe that Jesus was the Son 
of God, and that believing they might have life through His 


Name.” 
We may attack, if we will, the ability of these men to 


judge aright phenomena which called for the sharpest criti- 
cism, but we can scarcely attack their sincerity. There can- 
not be the slightest doubt that they believed that Jesus did 
literally and truly rise again from the dead.. Henceforth 
this statement became the very core and root of all their 
message to the world. No vehemence of ridicule or persecu- 
tion was able for an instant to shake their testimony. It is 
a palpable evasion to declare that “for the historian the life 
of Jesus finishes with His last sigh.” On the contrary, the 
life of Jesus really begins three days after His dying sigh 
was breathed. By every parallel of history the Galilean 
movement should have ended at the Cross. Jesus should 
henceforth have been remembered only as a hero and a 
martyr. Jf His story was to take any hold upon popular 
imagination, it should have been as the story of One who 
had gloriously failed. On the contrary, the Apostles 
preached a Jesus who had triumphantly succeeded. They 
never speak of Him as dead, but as One alive for evermore. 
We may call this, if we will, a kind of sublime hallucination. 
But we have then to ask whether it is probable that the en- 


444 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


tire course of human history could have been altered by a 
hallucination? 'The mind that suffers from hallucinations is 
a mind no longer sane. Can we possibly imagine a band of 

- madmen able to subdue Europe to a faith in an insane delu- 
sion? The hypothesis is absurd. Human nature certainly 
shows itself capable of gross delusions, but no instance can 
be given of whole nations, through a long course of time, ac- 
cepting a delusion with such thorough faith, that they have 
been willing to discard for its sake their traditional faiths and 
pieties, reconstruct their philosophies and social ethics, and 
build anew the entire structure of their life from the base 
upward. Yet this is what has happened. For all the West- 
ern nations, who are the custodians of all that is loftiest in 
human thought and government, and the representatives of 
all that is most efficient in human energy, the Resurrection 
of Christ has become a fundamental truth. The world re- 
dated its existence from the moment when a group of simple 
Galileans asserted that their Master had risen from the dead. 

But it is said, it is not necessary to use so harsh a word 
as hallucination. All that these idyllic stories were meant to 
convey is that there is a certain resurrection of the wise and 
good into an immortality of influence. Jesus did rise again, 
but not physically ; not even spiritually in any definite and 

personal sense; His influence survived, and from the Tomb 

‘He stretched out His hand to touch and mould anew the 
whole human race. But if the Resurrection chapters of the 
Bible are nothing more than an allegory of influence, why 
invent narratives full of circumstantial detail, and who among 
the Galileans were capable of these exquisite inventions ? 
And, besides this, is it likely that any doctrine of the immor- 
tality of influence should have had the least inherent power 
to change the whole current of human thought as we know 
the doctrine of Christ’s Resurrection did? The immortality 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 445 


of influence can be used as a synonym of the Resurrection 
only by a palpable abuse of language, which men so full of 
the critical and philosophic spirit as the Greeks and Romans 
would have been quick to recognize. For when man speaks 
of life, he means one thing only—conscious life. When he 
speaks of Risen Life, he means one thing only—renewed 
and conscious life in all its force of identity and personality. 
When he speaks of Eternal Life, he means eternal conscious 
personality, potent and efficient in all its acts, beyond the 
bare efficiency of earthly life. So clearly is this the meaning of 
the Scripture writers that none other is possible; for if the 
Resurrection can be reduced to a mere allegory of influence, 
the entire life of Jesus may be as easily reduced to a poetic 
allegory of charity and love. 

If men came to accept the Resurrection as a truth, it was 
because they saw it as the necessary complement of the his- 
tory of Christ. Jesus began His ministry with the doctrine 
of the Fatherhood of God, which implies that man is a par- 
taker in the Divine Nature. Man is not a creature of the 
dust, not the mere paragon of animals, but a Divine emana- 
tion, in which God expresses Himself. The ministry of 
Jesus is announced with the old prophetic formula, “The 
Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.” A little later comes a won- 
derful definition of God: “God is a Spirit.” A yet more 
wonderful discovery follows, He also is a Spirit; before 
Abraham was He was, and the physical form of Jesus of 
Nazareth is but a temporary incarnation. Another stage of 
thought is reached in the sublime saying, “I and the Father 
are one.” It is the identity of His own spirit with the God 
who is Spirit, and the discovery of His own deity. If these 
things are true it is no more a thing incredible that Jesus 
should rise from the dead. Men who have been deeply con- 
scious of their own inner life have found themselves able to 


446 THE MAN CHRIST JESUS 


say that “death is an almost laughable impossibility, and 
the extinction of personality (if so it were) the only true life.” 
The man who has once attained this vivid realism of bis own 
spiritual nature will find no difficulty in believing in the 
Resurrection of Christ. He will rather see it as the neces- 
sary vindication, not alone of Christ, but of man himself. It 
is materialism alone that is entirely dead to such a truth; 
and the battle of the Resurrection has always been fought 
out, and must evermore be waged between the materialist on 
the one hand, who sees life as a form of matter, and the 
spiritualist, who sees all human life as an expression of spirit. 
If the world has come to believe in the Resurrection of 
Christ, it is because the spiritual instinct in man feels such 
a resurrection necessary. Man needs vindication against 
the tyranny of time, and dust, and death. Jesus supphed 
that vindication. The power of the Resurrection is not that 
it was personal only, but representative. Man rose in Christ, 
and Christ became the first fruits of them that slept. And 
so His own great words to Mary are, “I ascend unto My 
Father and your Father, and to my God and your God.” 
Through forty days of spiritual existence, manifest at in- 
tervals to those who loved Him, Jesus prepared His disciples 
to receive this truth. The last scene of all occurred at Beth- 
any. In the evening coolness He led them out to the neigh~- 
borhood of that home where love had once anointed Him 
for burial, and of that tomb where He had once showed His 
mastery over death. “And He lifted up His hands and 
blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, 
that He was parted from them and carried up into Heaven. 
And they worshipped Him, and retured to Jerusalem with 
great joy, and were continually in the Temple, praising and 
blessing God.” They had learned the final lesson which 
fitted them to be the Apostles of the world’s eternal hope. 


THE RESURRECTION AND AFTER 447 


Henceforth Jesus was to them more alive and more beloved 
than He had ever been. Through all the dawns and nights 
that lay between them and martyrdom they heard His ad- 
vancing footstep, caught the clear whisper of His voice, and 
felt the glow of His immediate Presence; and never was this 
finer intimacy of the soul so deep as in the hour when they 
died for Him. They did not wish Him back again, because 
they knew that He had never gone away. No regrets 
mingled in their love for Him. The Bridegroom was still 
with them, and life, in spite of all its outward deprivations, 
became once more a bridal feast. In after ages great dis- 
putes arose which worked disruption in this tender amity, 
and turned the marriage feast to mourning. Why should 
we consider these, when we may share the bridal festival of 
faith and love? Why dispute on forms of dogma while the 
poetry of faith may still be ours, as it was theirs who were 
content to know that Christ was with them alway, as the 
Lover and the Friend? It is enough if we shall so read the 
story of the Man Christ Jesus that we may believe that He 
is God, “not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but 
taking of the Manhood into God.” And there is a creed at 
once wiser and simpler even than the creed of Athanasius, 
in which Doubt itself puts on angel-wings— 


“Thou seemest human and divine, 
The highest, holiest manhood, Thou: 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them Thine.” 


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APPENDIX 


THE TRUE SITE OF CALVARY 


Te reasons for rejecting the tradition that the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre stands upon the site of Golgotha may be 
briefly stated. 

The site certainly does not correspond with the descriptions 
of the Evangelists, that it was “nigh unto the city,” and it 
seems unlikely that it ever could have done so. It was not 
until the third century that the Empress Helena visited Jeru- 
salem with the avowed purpose of building a church upon the 
site of Golgotha. In the meantime Jerusalem had suffered 
great vicissitudes. It had been utterly destroyed and rebuilt; 
and for a period of three generations, from A. D. 130, by the 
order of the Emperor Hadrian, no Christian had been per- 
mitted to live within it. It is tolerably certain, therefore, that 
if Golgotha had been where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
now stands, there would have been no one left who could have 
placed its identity beyond dispute. It seems probable that 
the Empress was deceived, either by the ignorance or the con- 
nivance of her informants, who were only too anxious to oblige 
her, and were naturally desirous that an important church 
should be erected within the bounds of what then constituted 
the City of Jerusalem. 

It will be said, however, that the same causes which led to 
error in this case, would be equally effective in rendering the 
identification of any other site impossible. But it will appear 
at once that in the general ignorance it was quite possible that 
the real site should have been overlooked. Moreover, there 
were good reasons why at this time the site of Golgotha should 

29 449 


450 APPENDIX 


have been forgotten, apart from those reasons incidental to 
the thorough demolition of the city. It would be natural to 
assume that the place where Christ died would be so dear and 
sacred to the early Christians, that by no possibility could the 
knowledge of its locality be lost. But this is to reason from 
our modes of thought rather than from theirs. It was not 
upon the death and burial of Christ that early Christian thought 
brooded, but upon the eternal mystery and wonder of His new- 
risen life. The picture of His last shame and agony was oblit- 
erated by the overwhelming and joyous assurance that He was » 
alive for evermore. Men looked not to the spot of earth where 
He had suffered, but to the heavens, from which He might de- 
scend at any moment in great power and glory. Not thinking 
of Him as dead, it would be natural that they should exercise 
no care to preserve the tradition of the place where He had 
died. The sudden passion for identifying Holy Sites, took the 
early Christians by surprise. No one had thought it needful 
to preserve the necessary data, and in the years immediately 
following Christ’s death, no one had desired to do so.’ But 
something had to be done to meet the demand, especially 
when it was supported by so powerful a personage as the Em- 
press, and it might very easily happen that a site might be in- 
dicated at hazard, which was the wrong site, while the true site 
escaped notice, and found no advocate. 

By the same process of reasoning it is evident that when 
once a site had been selected, either right or wrong, and a 
great church had been erected on it, which in course of time 
attracted pilgrims from every quarter of the world, there 
would be good reasons why the tradition should remain un- 
contested and undisturbed. Wheré no one doubted the tra- 
dition, no one would seek to disprove it, and every year would 
add to its authority. When it is said that the continuous tra- 
dition of sixteen centuries is not to be lightly set aside, we 
agree; but the remark has far less force than it appears to 
have, when we remember that mere lapse of time is quite as 
effective in giving authority to a wrong tradition as a right 


APPENDIX 451 


one. A statement supported by the faith of many centuries 
certainly appears to have a better claim to credence than a 
statement of yesterday; yet there is no inherent reason why 
this should be so. A critical mind will attach but subsidiary 
importance to the length of time during which a statement has 
been accepted as truth, because errors as well as truths pos- 
sess an equal power of longevity. The really important ques- 
tion will be which of the two contending parties has the best 
right to be believed, as being the best equipped for the task 
of discrimination; and in this case, the one party is deeply in- 
terested in pleasing a powerful personage, and the other in 
getting at the real truth; the one is the priest of a credulous 
age, and the other the discoverer of a scientific age. 

As regards what is known as “Gordon’s Calvary,” the green 
hill immediately outside the present Damascus gate of Jeru- 
salem, there is a body of evidence which to me seems conclu- 
sive. (1) It certainly fulfils the topographical indications of 
the Gospel writers. It is outside the gate, and it is near to 
the city. It is a place where a great concourse could assem- 
ble. The road that winds about its base would afford the op- 
portunity for the “passers by” to rail on any one who suffered 
crucifixion. And, while some imagination is necessary, and 
perhaps some degree of preconception, there can be no mis- 
take that the face of the hill does bear an extraordinary re- 
semblance to a human skull, from which its name may have 
been derived. (2) It is more than curious that this hill should 
be known even among modern Jews as the “Hill of Execu- 
iton;” and the curse uttered by the Jew at this spot, on one 
who ruined the nation “by aspiring to be its king,” must have 
some historic significance. Christ manifestly answers this de- 
scription, and it would be eminently characteristic of the un- 
dying rancor of the Jewish mind that His name should be still 
cursed on the spot where He died. (3) The small garden at 
the foot of the hill, with the tomb in it, closely corresponds 
with the Gospel narratives. We are specifically told that there 
was a garden on or close to Golgotha, and in it was a tomb 


452 APPENDIX 


in which no man had lain. All authorities agree that this 
tomb is of the Herodian period. It is also unfinished. One 
only of its burial cavities is complete, and it would be natural 
‘to infer that one only has been used. ‘These coincidences are 
in themselves so close and extraordinary that they have the 
effect of proof upon a rational mind. 

Personal convictions, of course, count for little, but I may 
add that the more closely I examined “Gordon’s Calvary” and 
the adjoining tomb when I was residing in Jerusalem, the 
more overwhelming became the impression that these were in- 
deed the actual scenes of the death end burial of Jesus. I 
visited them at first without the least preconception in their 
favor, and in the company of those who regarded them with 
entire incredulity. What I saw convinced me of the truth of 
Gordon’s hypothesis; and after going over all the arguments 
for both sides in detail and at leisure, my conviction has been 
greatly strengthened. And when I remember all. the cruel 
strife associated with Godfrey and Louis, which has been waged 

around the reputed Holy Sepulchre; all the bitter feuds be- 
- tween Latin, Greek, and Armenian which still dishonor and 
pollute the shrine; all the meretricious splendor with which 
it is invested, and the jostling crowds who mingle with a su- 
perstitious reverence for gold and marble an utter detestation 
of each other: I am glad to think that the hand of God has 
hidden the true Calvary from the eye of man through all these 
centuries, that it might become possible, in an age of purer 
faith, for the devout pilgrim to stand beneath the open sky 
and see the earthly altar of the Lord, and to kneel at His 
tomb, amid such surroundings as Christ Himself loved—the 
perfume and meditative silence of a garden. 

For the full discussion of this subject, I would refer my 
readers to the writings of Dr. Robinson, Sir Charles Wilson, 
and Mr. Haskett Smith. In the July number for 1901 of the 
Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund, there is a 
eareful article by the Rey. Francis Gell, M. A., Hon. Canon of 
Worcester Cathedral. 


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